H V Brock
"Perhaps I might have done it more kindly," Constantia thought, as she drove in her cab to the station. "But it was such a foolish idea. I am glad Lucretia saw it for herself in the end."
Miss Lucretia went upstairs with slow, old footsteps, after her sister had gone. The last red glow had faded from her landscape, and everything was grey again, a shade deeper grey now, as it must go on growing deeper, till the night. She went into the little room, and, as she looked at the little bed which was never to hold her child, a tear came up into each of her eyes and trickled down her cheeks.
The doll lay on the bed, wrapped up in the white muslin that was to have made its underclothes, looking like a tiny corpse. It seemed to Lucretia like her dream of motherhood as it was now, the dead body of something that had never really lived.
She went to the window and looked out on the grey, darkening landscape, and over it there twinkled one faint star. She stood watching, and the star grew brighter, then another came out, and then another. For a long time Lucretia looked up: then she knelt down, looking up still.
The far-off light from the stars seemed to be shining on her face as she turned it to Fanny, when that faithful woman came up at last to bring her mistress down to supper.
"Miss Amy is going to Mrs. Dalrymple," she said, quietly, and with a little smile. "My sister left it to me to decide whether she should go to The Towers or come here, and I gave her up to them, Fanny. I am glad she is going to my sister. She will be happier there."
