The Perpetual Curate · Chapter 15 (2/2)

“Oh, Frank, go and speak to him, and tell him how miserable I am, and what a dreadful thing it would be; tell him everything, Frank. Oh, don’t leave him till you have persuaded him. Go, go; never mind me,” cried Mrs. Wentworth; and then she went to the door after him once more⁠—“Don’t say I sent for you. He⁠—he might not be pleased,” she said, in her faltering, eager voice; “and oh, Frank, consider how much hangs upon what you say.” When he left her, Louisa stood at the door watching him as he went along the passage towards her husband’s room. It was a forlorn-hope; but still the unreasoning, uncomprehending heart took a little comfort from it. She watched his figure disappearing along the narrow passage with a thrill of mingled anxiety and hope; arguing with Gerald, though it was so ineffectual when she tried it, might still be of some avail in stronger hands. His brother understood him, and could talk to him better than anybody else could; and though she had never convinced anybody of anything all her life, Mrs. Wentworth had an inalienable confidence in the effect of “being talked to.” In the momentary stimulus she went back to her darkened room and drew up the blind, and went to work in a tremulous way; but as the slow time went on, and Frank did not return, poor Louisa’s courage failed her; her fingers refused their office, and she began to imagine all sorts of things that might be going on in Gerald’s study. Perhaps the argument might be going the wrong way; perhaps Gerald might be angry at his brother’s interference; perhaps they might come to words⁠—they who had been such good friends⁠—and it would be her fault. She jumped up with her heart beating loud when she heard a door opened somewhere; but when nobody came, grew sick and faint, and hid her face, in the impatience of her misery. Then the feeling grew upon her that those precious moments were decisive, and that she must make one last appeal, or her heart would burst. She tried to resist the impulse in a feeble way, but it was not her custom to resist impulses, and it got the better of her; and this was why poor Louisa rushed into the library, just as Frank thought he had made a little advance in his pleading, and scattered his eloquence to the winds with a set of dreadful arguments which were all her own.