'Leave me, Miss Mortimer!' I cried, impatient of the self-reproach which her sorrow awakened in my breast. 'I wish only to die in peace. Must even this be denied me?'
'Ellen, my beloved Ellen, is that what you call peace?--Oh Thou who alone canst, deign to visit this troubled soul with the peace of thy children!' Miss Mortimer turned from me, and ceased to speak; but I saw her wasted hand lifted as in prayer, and her sobs attested the fervency of the petition. After a short silence, making a visible effort to compose herself, she again addressed me. 'Do not ask me to leave you, Ellen,' said she. 'I came hither, resolved not to return without you. If you are too weak to-day for our little journey, I will nurse you here. Nay, you must not forbid me. I will sit by you as still as death. Or, make an effort, my love, to reach home with me, and I will not intrude on you for a minute. You shall not even be urged to join my solitary meals. It will be comfort enough for me to feel that you are near.'
I could not be wholly insensible to an invitation so affectionate; but I struggled against my better self, and pronounced a hasty and peremptory refusal. Miss Mortimer looked deeply grieved and disappointed; but hers was that truly Christian spirit whose kindness no ingratitude could discourage, whose meekness no perverseness could provoke. She might have checked the untoward plant in its summer pride; but the lightning had scathed it, and it was become sacred in her eyes.
Sparing the irritability of the wounded spirit, she forbore to fret it by further urging her request. She rather endeavoured to soothe me by every expression of tenderness and respect. She at last submitted so far to my wayward humour, as to quit my apartment; aware, perhaps, that the spirit which roused itself against opposition might yield to solitary reflection. The voice of kindness, which I had expected never more to hear, stirred in my breast a milder nature; and as my eye followed the feeble step of Miss Mortimer, and read her wasted countenance, my heart smote me for my resistance to her love. 'She has risen from a sick-bed to seek me,' thought I; 'me, renounced as I have been by all mankind,--bereft as I am of all that allured the perfidious. Surely _this_ is not treachery.'