Before the day was over something like order was restored, and the vast place settled down into that solemn hush which follows a death. The servants stole about on tiptoe in the darkened house; the tread, that peculiar tread—who does not know and shudder at it?—of the undertaker’s men seemed to pervade the whole place. Lilias, shut up in her room with Lady Ada, heard it, and wept afresh.
“Yes, I am glad—glad that Esmeralda was not here,” she said. “She loved him so; and now she will have heard of it before she comes back, and—and the first bitterness and sorrow will have passed. She must hear of it to-day, of course; and she will be back to-morrow. I dread her coming, and yet I long for her.”
“She will come to-morrow—yes,” said Ada, faintly, as she sat beside the bed on which Lilias lay.
Would Esmeralda stop in her flight and—and come back? Death unites as well as divides. Under the shock of this sudden bereavement her heart might turn to Trafford, and he might melt toward her. It was not of the old man who lay in his death-sleep that Lady Ada was thinking as she sat in the darkened room. Her own fate hung in the balance.
Trafford moved about the house with the restlessness of a lost spirit, yet issuing the necessary orders and answering the inevitable questions with a grim calm. He could not leave Belfayre that day; but the next morning, when Lilias came down and asked, with tremulous eagerness, “Have you heard from Esmeralda?” he answered:
“No; she can not have heard of it. I will go up to town.”
“And bring her back with you? Yes, that will be best,” she said.
“Yes, that will be best,” he repeated, dully, and looking beyond her.
She put her hand on his arm with that touch which is so eloquent of sympathy and consolation.
“You will bear up—for her sake, Trafford?” she said in a low voice. “You look so ill—so worn. Dear, it had to come some day; and—and he must have died so happily! Tell Esmeralda that; it will comfort her.”