That moan was heard in the next room, where her mother, her brother-in-law, and the clergyman were waiting to be called; and they stood up and went into the sick room.
Surely we may draw a curtain over these last awful moments. Poor Mary!... her dying words might have been similar to those of the great world poet—"Light, light, more light!"
Half an hour later Mrs. Elton was carried in a state of utter unconsciousness from the room of her dead child, whilst Helena sobbed away her grief in her husband's arms, and Flora Adair drove home more saddened even than when she left it some two hours before.
CHAPTER X.
That evening Charles Elton arrived in Paris to find his sister dead, and his mother stretched on her bed like a person in a trance, with her eyes wide open, but apparently unconscious of everything that was going on around her. She did not even speak or move when he went into the room and kissed her. Some hours later, when he and Helena were speaking in whispers about the preparations for the funeral, she, however, started up suddenly, and said, "She must be taken to England,—we will go with her and see her laid beside her father. Charles, you will arrange all this." Then slowly and deliberately she left the room and went into Mary's, where she remained day and night in spite of all remonstrance, until the coffin was screwed down and carried away for transportation to England. She gazed after it with tearless eyes as she stood leaning against the bed from which it had been taken, but the despair of her look and attitude was such that it awed Helena, who was sobbing passionately, into silence, and rising from her knees she went and wound her arms round her mother, and tried by her caresses to soften the bitterness of her grief, but Mrs. Elton seemed to shrink from her, and after a few minutes she said, coldly, "When do we start?"
"At six this evening," murmured Helena; "the packet leaves Havre for Southampton at twelve to-night."
Mrs. Elton then disengaged herself from Helena, and going into her own room she remained there alone with her sorrow, for Helena did not venture to follow her. This unnatural composure and coldness in their mother rendered the journey to England even more sad and silent to Helena and Charles than it must have been under any circumstances, and had it not been for Harry Caulfield's comparative cheerfulness and activity of mind it would have been almost unbearable.