Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 1.djvu/54

 , that would have seemed to her shocking. She had another inspiration, and she said to him in a manner in which she had had occasion to speak before—

'The reason why we have come is only to be kind. If we are kind we shan't mind its being disagreeable.'

'Why should we be kind, if she's a bad woman?' Hyacinth inquired. 'She must be very low; I don't want to know her.'

'Hush, hush,' groaned poor Amanda, edging toward him with clasped hands. 'She is not bad now; it has all been washed away—it has been expiated.'

'What's expiated?' asked the child, while she almost kneeled down in the dust, catching him to her bosom.

'It's when you have suffered terribly—suffered so much that it has made you good again.'

'Has she suffered very much?'

'For years and years. And now she is dying. It proves she is very good now, that she should want to see us.'

'Do you mean because we are good?' Hyacinth went on, probing the matter in a way that made his companion quiver, and gazing away from her, very seriously, across the river, at the dreary waste of Battersea.

'We shall be good if we are pitiful, if we make an effort,' said the dressmaker, seeming to look up at him rather than down.

'But if she is dying? I don't want to see any one die.'

Miss Pynsent was bewildered, but she rejoined, desperately, 'If we go to her, perhaps she won't. Maybe we shall save her.'