"Mr. Ward--can it be! Oh, how good in you," commenced Flora, hastening with unaffected delight to greet her old friend; but the aspect of the venerable clergyman, as he kindly but gravely returned her greeting, awoke a feeling of alarm in the bosom of Lady Legrange.
"You bring bad tidings--my mother!" she exclaimed, still grasping the hand of the old man, and looking up anxiously into his face.
"Mrs. Vernon is not so well as we all wish her to be," replied Mr. Ward, quietly but sadly meeting the daughter's earnest gaze.
"She wished you to come to me--?"
"She does not know of my coming, but I thought it best to let you hear all, and an interview is so much more satisfactory than a letter--"
"Oh, tell me all!" cried Flora in agony. "My mother--is she very--is she dangerously ill?"
Mr. Ward broke to the daughter, as gently as he could, that, in the preceding night, Mrs. Vernon had been suddenly and alarmingly attacked by a malady which threatened her life. He did not say--it was unnecessary that he should say what Flora too surely divined--that the overtaxed powers of her mother's frame were at length giving way; that her exertions during the illness of the children had, it was feared, irreparably injured herself; and that it was very doubtful whether, on his return to Wingsdale, he would find the sufferer yet alive.
Flora could not hesitate now; even the fear of displeasing her husband was swallowed up in a more terrible fear. She wrote a few hurried lines for Sir Amery to receive on his arrival, hastily made her slight preparations for the journey, and under the escort of her kind old friend, and accompanied by her maid, with a very heavy heart she set out for the home of her much-loved parent.
The journey by railroad occupied about three hours; long, painful hours were they to Flora. She could not but contrast this return to Laurel Bank with her last. Then, indeed, she had not been without anxiety, and even a shadow of self-reproach, but the prevailing feeling of her heart had been all-absorbing happiness. She loved and was beloved again, and might have expressed herself in the language of the great poet--
"Come what sorrow may,
It cannot countervail the exchange of joy
Which one short moment gives me in his sight."