Shelton wished the friendly earth would open beneath his feet then and there.
“Mrs Carhayes, pray be calm,” he said unsteadily. “You have heard the worst, remember—the worst, but not all. You cousin shared poor Tom’s fate.”
“Eustace?”
The word was framed, rather than uttered, by those livid and bloodless lips. Yet the listener caught it and bent his head in assent.
She did not cry out; she did not swoon. Yet those who beheld her almost wished she had done both—anything rather than take the blow as she was doing. She stood there in the doorway—her tall form seeming to tower above them—her large eyes sparkling forth from her livid and bloodless countenance—and the awful and set expression of despair imprinted therein was such as the two who witnessed it prayed they might never behold on human countenance again.
She had heard the worst—the worst, but not all—her informant had said. Had she? The mockery of it! The first news was terrible; the second—death; black, hopeless, living death. Had heard the worst! Ah, the mockery of it! And as these reflections sank into her dazed brain—driven in, as it were, one after another by the dull blows of a hammer, her lips even shaped the ghost of a smile. Ah, the irony of it!
Still she did not faint. She stood there in the doorway, curdling the very heart’s blood of the lookers on with that dreadful shadow of a smile. Then, without a word, she turned and walked to her room.
“Oh! I must go to her!” cried Mrs Hoste eagerly. “Oh, this is too fearful.”
“If you take my advice—it’s better not! Not at present, at any rate,” answered Shelton. “Leave her to get over the first shock alone. And what a shock it is. Bereaved of husband and cousin at one stroke. And the cousin was almost like a brother, wasn’t he?”
“Yes,” and the recollection of her recent suspicions swept in with a rush upon the speaker’s mind, deepening her flurry and distress. “Yes. That is—I mean—Yes, I believe she was very fond of him. But how bravely she took it.”