Yes, a pair of horses, trotting briskly up the hard-frozen street. No; they went past.
“It is Lady Bloss,” said Emma, pulling up the blind and actually opening the window; “she is dining at the Cholmondeleys’. But I hear another coming. Ah, it’s only a dog-cart!”
“Do shut the window!” I implored; but I spoke to deaf ears.
There were wheels in the distance—a long way off—and I was not to worry, but to put on my cloak at once.
Five minutes elapsed—ten minutes. I rose and pulled down the window without apology. A quarter of an hour!
“Yes,” cried Emma, half-hysterically; “the carriage is rather late, but I really hear it now. It is coming at last!”
But, no; it was merely Mound the undertaker, and family, in his own best mourning-coach. Then Emma’s little traveling-clock chimed out eight silvery strokes.
“And they dine at eight!” said Emma, under her breath. “Perhaps it was half-past,” she said. “Can the coachman have made a mistake?” And she looked at me with—oh, such a piteous, wistful, eager pair of eyes.
I made no reply. I dared not put my opinion into plain, brutal words, and tell the white-faced, anxious little inquirer, that “her friend Lady Hildegarde had forgotten us!” The fire had died down. The candles were expiring in their sockets. We sat together in absolute silence. Oh, if I live to be a hundred, I shall never forget the heartache I endured that miserable half-hour—not for myself, but for Emma.
At last she said, in a husky whisper—