The fact was this: Jane and the old nurse, worn out by nursing and anxiety, having ascertained that Margaret was sleeping calmly, had allowed themselves to be beguiled by the pleasant fumes of tea and the kindly warmth of the kitchen fire into giving way themselves. During Margaret's flight and Adèle's pursuit, during the arrival of Margaret's husband and the subsequent drawing up of the carriage, they had been sleeping, one on each side of the kitchen fire.
Jane was the first to be aroused—the first, that is to say, to gain full possession of her senses, for the violent ringing of the outside bell had startled the old woman so much that at first she scarcely knew where she was. Jane got up at once, straightened her sprightly figure, smoothed her hair and apron and struck a light. "Who in the world may it be?" she muttered indignantly: "I'd be bound it's one of them boys. The mistress just gone off too, and frightening her out of her wits. Them sort hasn't got a spark of feeling about them."
She walked leisurely up the stairs with her candle, and opened the door that led into the hall. She had scarcely done so before a blast of wind sweeping through the hall put it out. In the next moment her arm was seized, she was dragged into the semi-light outside and confronted with Maurice's fierce eyes. For while Jane was preparing herself to answer the importunate bell the child had been up and down; she had opened the door of the different rooms, all well known to her; she had come down trembling and weeping to say that they were dark and empty, and where—where was mamma?
There was reproach in the wailing cry; in her rapid journey, in her enforced separation from L'Estrange, in her weariness, in her childish sorrow, this had been the one consolation: at the end of it she should see her mother, she should rest in her arms. And now, when the end had come, when the home so intensely longed for had been found, the promised remained unfulfilled.
The blow to Laura was all the more cruel that it was utterly unexpected. No sad forebodings had crossed her young mind. She had pictured the little parlor and the lighted lamp and her mother's gentle face and open arms, and then the rest in those arms, the telling out of her pent-up woes.
The cottage had been found, but within it was only empty darkness. Laura threw herself down on the sofa, and her wailing cry reached the ears of her father as he dragged the landlady out into the light: "Mamma has gone, and mon père is dead." That and his own disappointment made him almost mad for the moment. Seizing Jane by the shoulder, he shook her roughly as he looked down into her white face: "What have you done with her, woman? Speak, or by Heaven I will make you!"
[CHAPTER X.]
LAURA AND HER FATHER.
Oh, there is never sorrow of heart
That shall lack a timely end,
If but to God we turn and ask
Of Him to be our Friend.