She bore it better than he had expected, unknowing how he himself absorbed her chief anxiety. Indeed, the hours which had intervened had brought him to so resigned and thankful a tone, that it almost hid from her the full force of his tidings. She asked for the letter, and then rose in search of light.
'You would like to go to your room,' he said, and gave her his arm, both too much absorbed to remember that he had not helped her upstairs since the accident. When he had kissed her, and shut her into her room, he leant for some seconds on the rail, and his face was contracted by suffering, more physical than mental.
He was at the evening meal, and so was Cherry. She would not have her supper sent up, she wanted to be in his presence, and be supported by it. She was so far stunned, that the horrors that would yet haunt her for many a night had not dawned on her imagination; but when he said, 'It is well,' she felt it so, but she needed to look at his face to be soothed and comforted—yes, though it was terribly pale. The colour, save in chance flushes, had never come back, and to-night the whiteness was like marble, but the quiet strength and peace seemed to hush, bear her up, and quell the wailings of her heart.
And when John Harewood came full of anxious inquiry, he really thought the tidings had overcome them less than his own wife, who had never quite recovered the effect of her exertions at the accident, and coming home over-tired, had been quite crushed by the intelligence—the more because, like those whose judgment was stronger than their yearning over Edgar, she did not trust much to those few tokens of penitence. And Angela was not withheld from loudly blaming Fernan for not having, as she assumed, insisted on proclaiming the sinner's Hope, and when assured, that no doubt he must have done so, though he did not set down his own words, she shook her head, and said, 'How could he, when he did not know it himself?' There she was silenced by Felix, and went to the Hepburns for sympathy.
For the rest, the family spoke little of the new loss. Felix quietly busied himself in the arrangements that the discovery of of his new heir made him think desirable. Mrs. Fulbert's remarriage, and the lapse of her annuity, made him better able to carry out his plans at once; and if his heir were not Clement, it was necessary to make the arrangements more definitively.
Of course the little Gerald was telegraphed and written for. He must be welcomed and loved, but he was on the whole dreaded as much as hoped for. The Mays spoke of the self-reliance of the best-trained colonial children; and what could this poor boy be—the deserted son of the singing-woman—but at best a sort of 'Luck of Roaring Camp.' Wilmet infinitely pitied Geraldine, and rejoiced that the river lay between, to keep Kester and Edward out of the way of corruption.
[CHAPTER XLV.]
THE MYRTLE SPRAY.
'He smiled, "Shall I complain if joy go by
With summer days and winter follow it?
If He who gave the gladness I have known,
Shall take it from me, shall I make my moan?
Nay, for it all is His, the joy, the pain,
The weeping and the mirth, the buoyant breath
Of happy toil; the mist on weary brain;
The turmoil of our life, the hush of death:
And neither life nor death—things near nor far,
Shall sever us from Him whose own we are."'
Autumn.