Linda, for a moment, could not speak. 'No, mamma,' she said at last, 'I don't know what it is.'
Mrs. Woodward twined her arm round her daughter's waist, as they sat on the sofa close to each other. Linda tried to compose herself, but she felt that she was trembling in her mother's arms. She would have given anything to be calm; anything to hide her secret. She little guessed then how well her mother knew it. Her eyes were turned down, and she found that she could not raise them to her mother's face.
'No, mamma,' she said. 'I don't know—what is it?'
'Gertrude is to be married, Linda. She is engaged.'
'I thought she refused Harry,' said Linda, through whose mind a faint idea was passing of the cruelty of nature's arrangements, which gave all the lovers to her sister.
'Yes, dearest, she did; and now another has made an offer—she has accepted him.' Mrs. Woodward could hardly bring herself to speak out that which she had to say, and yet she felt that she was only prolonging the torture for which she was so anxious to find a remedy.
'Has she?' said Linda, on whom the full certainty of her misery had now all but come.
'She has accepted our dear Alaric.'
Our dear Alaric! what words for Linda's ears! They did reach her ears, but they did not dwell there—her soft gentle nature sank beneath the sound. Her mother, when she looked to her for a reply, found that she was sinking through her arms. Linda had fainted.
Mrs. Woodward neither screamed, nor rang for assistance, nor emptied the water-jug over her daughter, nor did anything else which would have the effect of revealing to the whole household the fact that Linda had fainted. She had seen girls faint before, and was not frightened. But how, when Linda recovered, was she to be comforted?