Half-past eight! She looked up and caught her mother’s eyes, and the trouble and question in them, and the needle going through the fine muslin, seemed to go through her heart. At nine the watching became unbearable. She said softly “I must go to bed. I am tired;” but she put away with her usual neatness her work, and her spools of thread, her thimble and her scissors. Her movement in the room roused the doctor thoroughly. He stood up, stretched his arms outward and upward, and said “he believed he had been sleeping, and must ask their pardon for his indifference.” And then he walked to the window and looking out added “It is a lovely night but the moon looks like storm. Oh!”—and he turned quickly with the exclamation—“I forgot to tell you that I heard a strange report to-day, nothing less than that General Hyde returned on the Mary Pell this morning, bringing with him a child.”
“A child!” said Mrs. Moran.
“A girl, then, a little mite of a creature. Mrs. Davy told me the Captain carried her in his arms to the carriage which took them to Hyde Manor.”
“And how should Mrs. Davy know?”
“The Davys live next door to the Pells, and the servants of one house carried the news to the other house. She said the General sent to his son’s lodging to see if he was in town, but he was not. It was then only eight o’clock in the morning.”
“How unlikely such a story is! Do you believe it?”
“Ask to-morrow. As for me, I neither know nor care. That is the report. Who can tell what the Hydes will do?”
Then Cornelia said a hasty “good-night” and went to her room. She was sick at heart; she trembled, something in her life had lost its foot-hold, and a sudden bewildering terror—she knew not how to explain—took possession of her. For once she forgot her habitual order and neatness; her pretty dress was thrown heedlessly across a chair, and she fell upon her knees weeping, and yet she could not pray.
Still the very posture and the sweet sense of help and strength it implied, brought her the power to take into consideration such unexpected news, and such unexplained neglect on her lover’s part, “General Hyde has returned; that much I feel certain of,” she thought, “and Joris must have left Hyde Manor about the time his father reached New York. Joris would take the river road, being the shortest, his father would take the highway as the best for the carriage. Consequently, they passed each other and did not know it. Then Joris has been sent for, and it was right and natural that he should go—but oh, he might have written!—ten words would have been enough—It was right he should go—but he might have written!—he might have written!”—and she buried her face in her pillow and wept bitterly. Alas! Alas! Love wounds as cruelly when he fails, as when he strikes; and even when Cornelia had outworn thought and feeling, and fallen into a sorrowful sleep, she was conscious of this failure, and her soul sighed all night long “He might have written!”