“I think not. She knows the way to the only Comforter. I am not afraid of her after those blessed tears.”
Dr. May was right; Meta presently returned to them, in the same gentle subdued sadness, enfolding her, indeed, as a flower weighed down by mist, but not crushing nor taking away her powers. It was as if she were truly upheld; and thankful to her friends as she was, she did not throw herself on them in utter dependence or self-abandonment.
She wrote needful letters, shedding many tears over them, and often obliged to leave off to give the blinding weeping its course, but refusing to impose any unnecessary task upon Dr. May’s lame arm. All that was right, she strove to do; she saw Mr. Charles Wilmot, and was refreshed by his reading to her; and when Dr. May desired it, she submissively put on her bonnet, and took several turns with Ethel in the shrubbery, though it made her cry heartily to look into the downstairs rooms. And she lay on the sofa at last, owning herself strangely tired, she did not know why, and glad that Ethel should read to her. By and by, she went to dress for the evening, and came back, full of the tidings that one of the children in the village had been badly burned. It occupied her very much—she made Ethel promise to go and see about her to-morrow, and sent Bellairs at once with every comfort that she could devise.
On the whole, those two days were to Ethel a peaceful and comfortable time. She saw more than usual of her father, and had such conversations with him as were seldom practicable at home, and that chimed in with the unavowed care which hung on their minds; while Meta was a most sweet and loving charge, without being a burden, and often saying such beautiful things in her affectionate resignation, that Ethel could only admire and lay them up in her mind. Dr. May went backwards and forwards, and brought good accounts of Margaret and fond messages; he slept at the Grange each night, and Meta used to sit in the corner of the sofa and work, or not, as best suited her, while she listened to his talk with Ethel, and now and then herself joined.
George Rivers’s absence was a serious inconvenience in all arrangements; but his sister dreaded his grief as much as she wished for his return; and often were the posts and the journeys reckoned over, without a satisfactory conclusion, as to when he could arrive from so remote a part of Scotland.
At last, as the two girls had finished their early dinner, the butler brought in word that Mr. Norman May was there. Meta at once begged that he would come in, and Ethel went into the hall to meet him. He looked very wan, with the dark rings round his eyes a deeper purple than ever, and he could hardly find utterance to ask, “How is she?”
“As good and sweet as she can be,” said Ethel warmly; but no more, for Meta herself had come to the dining-room door, and was holding out her hand. Norman took it in both his, but could not speak; Meta’s own soft voice was the first. “I thought you would come—he was so fond of you.”
Poor Norman quite gave way, and Meta was the one to speak gentle words of soothing. “There is so much to be thankful for,” she said. “He has been spared so much of the suffering Dr. May feared for him; and he was so happy about George.”
Norman made a great effort to recover himself. Ethel asked for Flora and George. It appeared that they had been on an excursion when the first letter arrived at Glenbracken, and thus had received both together in the evening, on their return. George had been greatly overcome, and they had wished to set off instantly; but Lady Glenbracken would not hear of Flora’s travelling night and day, and it had at length been arranged that Norman Ogilvie should drive Norman across the country that evening, to catch the mail for Edinburgh, and he had been on the road ever since. George was following with his wife more slowly, and would be at home to-morrow evening. Meantime, he sent full authority to his father-in-law to make arrangements.
Ethel went to see the burned child, leaving Meta to take her walk in the garden under Norman’s charge. He waited on her with a sort of distant reverence for a form of grief, so unlike what he had dreaded for her, when the first shock of the tidings had brought back to him the shattered bewildered feelings to which he dared not recur.