Page:The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (emended first edition), Volume 3.djvu/180

170 mother was quite distressed about me; but I couldn't help it—at least I thought I could not; though sometimes I felt a pang of remorse for my undutiful conduct to her, and made an effort to amend, attended with some partial success—and indeed I was generally more humanized in my demeanour to her than to any one else, Mr. Lawrence excepted. Rose and Fergus usually shunned my presence; and it was well they did, for I was not fit company for them, nor they for me, under the present circumstances.

Mrs. Huntingdon did not leave Wildfell Hall till above two months after our farewell interview. During that time she never appeared at church, and I never went near the house: I only knew she was still there by her brother's brief answers to my many and varied enquiries respecting her. I was a very constant and attentive visiter to him throughout the whole period of his illness and convalescence; not only from the interest I took in his recovery,