"Sh!—sh!" admonished Louisa impatiently, "be quiet, Edie, you mustn't go on like that! Be quiet now!" she added more severely seeing that the girl made no effort to control herself. "What will your servants think?"
"Do you suppose," retorted Edie, "that I care what they think? They can't think more, can they? when they all talk of Luke as if he were a murderer."
"Do for God's sake be silent, Edie. This is too awful."
And Louisa, almost roughly, dragged herself away from the girl's hysterical embrace. She had tried so hard for two days and two nights to keep herself together, and her nerves in check. All day to-day had been one long continuous battle against the danger of "breaking down," that bugbear of the conventional woman of the world.
Now this danger, backed up by this poor child's grief, loomed greater than ever, now—now—that "breaking down" would become a positive sin, the most abject form of cowardice. But Edie's bewilderment, her loneliness, were intensely pathetic. Louisa had tried to be severe, and insisted on checking the access of hysteria, but her heart went out to the child, and to her puzzlement in face of this awful, un-understandable riddle.
"Look here, Edie," she said gently, putting her own kind arms round the quaking shoulders of the younger girl, "you are just going to show father and me how brave you can be. You are Luke's nearest and dearest one on earth; you must not add to his troubles by this exaggerated show of grief. We'll all have to be brave—all of us—but Luke will have to be the bravest of us all, and so we must all do our best to keep up our courage, and help his own."
She was not accustomed to making such long speeches, nor yet to preach and to admonish. Life, before now, had never placed her in the necessity of admonishing others: everybody round her—the people with whom she came in contact always behaved very much as they should—in the proper conventional worldly manner. People she had hitherto to do with, did not give way to hysterical tears, nor had they occasion to display fortitude in the face of an overwhelming moral shock.
Therefore Louisa was not sure if her words would carry weight, or if they would produce the effect she desired. She gazed anxiously at Edie whilst she spoke, looking with hopeful yet fearful eyes in the poor girl's face, wondering if she had succeeded in calming the hysterical outburst.
Edie hung her head, wilfully veiling her eyes beneath the drooping lids. She twirled her gossamer handkerchief into a tight wet ball and toyed with it nervously.
"It's not much good," she said at last, in very low tones so that Louisa had some difficulty in hearing what she said, "my trying to be brave—when Luke is such a coward!"