'Perhaps,' continued his wife, 'it is best that you should see Jane now, and judge for yourself. For my part, her noble resignation under this great trial, has so astonished and impressed me, that I only feel competent to advise as she advises, to act as she thinks fit. I begin to think that it is not we who are to guide her, but she who is to guide us.'
Mr Langley lingered irresolute for a few minutes; then quitted the room, and proceeded alone to Jane Langley's apartment.
When he knocked at the door, it was opened by Clara. There was an expression partly of confusion, partly of sorrow on her face; and when her father stopped as if to speak to her, she merely pointed into the room, and hurried away without uttering a word.
Mr Langley had been prepared by his wife for the change that had taken place in his daughter since the day before; but he felt startled, almost overwhelmed, as he now looked on her. One of the poor girl's most prominent attractions, from her earliest years, had been the beauty of her complexion; and now, the freshness and the bloom had entirely departed from her face; it seemed absolutely colourless. Her expression, too, appeared to Mr Langley's eyes, to have undergone a melancholy alteration; to have lost its youthfulness suddenly; to have assumed a strange character of firmness and thoughtfulness, which he had never observed in it before. She was sitting by an open window, commanding a lovely view of wide, sunny landscape; a Bible which her mother had given her, lay open on her knees; she was reading it as her father entered. For the first time in his life, he paused, speechless, as he approached to speak to one of his own children.
'I am afraid I look very ill,' she said, holding out her hand to him; 'but I am better than I look; I shall be quite well in a day or two. Have you heard my message, father? have you been told?'
'My love, we will not speak of it yet; we will wait a few days,' said Mr Langley.
'You have always been so kind to me,' she continued, in less steady tones, 'that I am sure you will let me go on. I have very little to say, but that little must be said now, and then we need never recur to it again. Will you consider all that has happened, as something forgotten? You have heard already what it is I entreat you to do; will you let him -- Mr Streatfield --' (She stopped, her voice failed for a moment, but she recovered herself again almost immediately.) 'Will you let Mr Streatfield remain here, or recall him if he is gone, and give him an opportunity of explaining himself to my sister? If poor Clara should refuse to see him for my sake, pray do not listen to her. I am sure this is what ought to be done; I have been thinking of it very calmly, and I feel that it is right. And there is something more I have to beg of you, father; it is, that, while Mr Streatfield is here, you will allow me to go and stay with my aunt. You know how fond she is of me. Her house is not a day's journey from home. It is best for everybody (much the best for me) that I should not remain here at present; and -- and -- dear father! I have always been your spoiled child; and I know you will indulge me still. If you do what I ask you, I shall soon get over this heavy trial. I shall be well again if I am away at my aunt's -- if --'
She paused; and putting one trembling arm around her father's neck, hid her face on his breast. For some minutes, Mr Langley could not trust himself to answer her. There was something, not deeply touching only, but impressive and sublime, about the moral heroism of this young girl, whose heart and mind -- hitherto wholly inexperienced in the harder and darker emergencies of life -- now rose in the strength of their native purity superior to the bitterest, cruellest trial that either could undergo; whose patience and resignation, called forth for the first time by a calamity which suddenly thwarted the purposes and paralysed the affections that had been destined to endure for a life, could thus appear at once in the fullest maturity of virtue and beauty. As the father thought on these things; as he vaguely and imperfectly estimated the extent of the daughter's sacrifice; as he reflected on the nature of the affliction that had befallen her -- which combined in itself a fatality that none could have foreseen, a fault that could neither be repaired nor resented, a judgement against which there was no appeal -- and then remembered how this affliction had been borne, with what words and what actions it had been met, he felt that it would be almost a profanation to judge the touching petition just addressed to him, by the criterion of his worldly doubts and his worldly wisdom. His eye fell on the Bible, still open beneath it; he remembered the little child who was set in the midst of the disciples, as teacher and example to all; and when at length he spoke in answer to his daughter, it was not to direct or to advise, but to comfort and comply.
They delayed her removal for a few days, to see if she faltered in her resolution, if her bodily weakness increased; but she never wavered; nothing in her appearance changed, either for better or for worse.