Mary Sloane did not count.
But I did it because Hester would have cared if she had been
here. She always liked to see me neat and dainty. So, although
I was tired and sick at heart, I put on my pale blue muslin and
dressed my hair.
At first I did my hair up in a way I had always liked; but had
seldom worn, because Hester had disapproved of it. It became me;
but I suddenly felt as if it were disloyal to her, so I took the
puffs down again and arranged my hair in the plain, old-fashioned
way she had liked. My hair, though it had a good many gray
threads in it, was thick and long and brown still; but that did
not matter--nothing mattered since Hester was dead and I had sent
Hugh Blair away for the second time.
The Newbridge people all wondered why I had not put on mourning
for Hester. I did not tell them it was because Hester had asked
me not to. Hester had never approved of mourning; she said that
if the heart did not mourn crape would not mend matters; and if
it did there was no need of the external trappings of woe. She
told me calmly, the night before she died, to go on wearing my
pretty dresses just as I had always worn them, and to make no
difference in my outward life because of her going.
"I know there will be a difference in your inward life," she said
wistfully.
And oh, there was! But sometimes I wondered uneasily, feeling
almost conscience-stricken, whether it were wholly because Hester
had left me--whether it were no partly because, for a second
time, I had shut the door of my heart in the face of love at her
bidding.
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