With those words he hurried out. In equal haste on my side, I ran
upstairs to compose myself in my own room before meeting Aunt Ablewhite
and Rachel at the luncheon-table.
I am well aware--to dwell for a moment yet on the subject of Mr.
Godfrey--that the all-profaning opinion of the world has charged him
with having his own private reasons for releasing Rachel from her
engagement, at the first opportunity she gave him. It has also reached
my ears, that his anxiety to recover his place in my estimation has been
attributed in certain quarters, to a mercenary eagerness to make his
peace (through me) with a venerable committee-woman at the Mothers'
Small-Clothes, abundantly blessed with the goods of this world, and
a beloved and intimate friend of my own. I only notice these odious
slanders for the sake of declaring that they never had a moment's
influence on my mind. In obedience to my instructions, I have exhibited
the fluctuations in my opinion of our Christian Hero, exactly as I find
them recorded in my diary. In justice to myself, let me here add that,
once reinstated in his place in my estimation, my gifted friend never
lost that place again. I write with the tears in my eyes, burning to say
more. But no--I am cruelly limited to my actual experience of persons
and things. In less than a month from the time of which I am now
writing, events in the money-market (which diminished even my miserable
little income) forced me into foreign exile, and left me with nothing
but a loving remembrance of Mr. Godfrey which the slander of the world
has assailed, and assailed in vain.
Let me dry my eyes, and return to my narrative.
I went downstairs to luncheon, naturally anxious to see how Rachel was
affected by her release from her marriage engagement.
It appeared to me--but I own I am a poor authority in such matters--that
the recovery of her freedom had set her thinking again of that other man
whom she loved, and that she was furious with herself for not being able
to control a revulsion of feeling of which she was secretly ashamed. Who
was the man? I had my suspicions--but it was needless to waste time in
idle speculation. When I had converted her, she would, as a matter of
course, have no concealments from Me. I should hear all about the man;
I should hear all about the Moonstone. If I had had no higher object in
stirring her up to a sense of spiritual things, the motive of relieving
her mind of its guilty secrets would have been enough of itself to
encourage me to go on.
Aunt Ablewhite took her exercise in the afternoon in an invalid chair.
Rachel accompanied her. "I wish I could drag the chair," she broke out,
recklessly. "I wish I could fatigue myself till I was ready to drop."