“What is it?” asked Tom, his own face white with an impending sense of dread as he looked into Miss Morton’s eyes.
As gently as possible, but in her own straightforward and inevitably somewhat abrupt way, Miss Morton told him.
“I want to warn you,” she said, “to prepare for a shock, and I think it kinder to tell you the truth at once. Your cousin Madeleine—Miss Van Norman—has taken her own life.”
“What?” Tom almost shouted the word, and his face showed an absolutely uncomprehending amazement.
“She killed herself to-night,” Miss Morton went on, whose efforts were now directed toward making the young man understand, rather than towards sparing his feelings.
But Tom could not seem to grasp it. “What do you mean?” he said, catching her by both arms. “Madeleine? Killed herself?”
“Yes,” said Miss Morton, shaken out of her own calm by Tom’s excited voice. “In the library, after we had all gone to bed, she stabbed herself with that horrible paper-cutter thing. Did you know she was unhappy?”
“Unhappy? No; why should she be? To-morrow was to have been her wedding day!”
“To-day,” corrected Miss Morton. “It is already the day on which our dear Madeleine was to have become a bride. And instead——” Glancing around the brilliant room and at the bridal bower, Miss Morton’s composure gave way entirely, and she sobbed hysterically. At this Cicely Dupuy came across from the library. Putting her arm around Miss Morton, she led the sobbing woman away, and without a word to Tom Willard gave him a glance which seemed to say that he must look out for himself, for her duty was to attend Miss Morton.
As the two women left the drawing-room Tom followed them. He walked slowly, and stared about as if uncertain where to go. He paused a moment midway in the room, and, stooping, picked up some small object from the carpet, which he put in his waistcoat pocket.