'How is she?'
'There it is! I don't know. I staid to help Sibby, and by that time I was so done up, that it seems a perfect blank. I must have frightened Sibby, for I remember her scared eyes, and then I fancy Fulbert and Lance were dosing me with soup, or wine, or something, and I went to bed; but what they said about any one, I can't recollect. I'll ask Lance.'
Lance sat up in bed, after a sleep he had fallen into towards the morning. Poor Cherry! he said, he had led her back to her room perfectly passive, and put her in her chair, but she seemed turned to stone. Mr. Audley had come and taken her hand, but it lay passively; she did not seem to hear his words, and her eyes had a stony mechanical glare like paralysis. The suddenness was practically as great to her as if Felix had been drowned at once. Mr. Audley had advised them to give her time to recover from her stunned condition, and she had been left to Stella, who had last reported that her stupefaction had passed into heavy slumber as soon as her head was on the pillow.
Robina had been entirely taken up with Angela, whose fatigue was almost as great as Clement's, and who had besides caught a bad cold and toothache on the wedding-day. Her prostration had taken the form of violent weeping, which Lance had heard half the night, and now, though all was quiet, the brothers durst not run the risk of waking her.
Indeed, when Mr. Page looked in with a somewhat more cheery account of Mrs. Harewood, he advised that no attempt should be made to disturb either sister, but that, in especial, Geraldine's room should be darkened, and she should be allowed to lie and doze, without being roused, under peril of mischief to brain or nerves.
As to Angela, she awoke soon enough, and then nothing would keep her from getting up and wandering about in restless misery and much bodily discomfort, almost engrossing Robina, while Stella guarded Cherry. Very thankful were all for the presence and aid of that little bride, whose names, the gift of her dying father, had never fitted her better, for she was the household star, the happy gift through those mournful hours. The loss to her was as of a parent, and no father could have been more beloved than her "Brother," but the change in her life had made it just not the utter desolation it was to the home sisters, and the strength of the new bond, and the soothing bliss of her husband's caresses, lifted her up enough to make her sympathy a support. She had never been a childish girl, and the last remnant of childishness seemed to have passed away in that struggle on the stairs. Her brightness had always been pensive and subdued, and in the time of distress there was a kind of lamp-light lustre in her looks, words, and ways that relieved dejection wherever she went, while either her powers were greatly developed or only had full scope when she and Robina had to share all the feminine cares of the stricken family.
That leaden state of Geraldine's continued the next morning, though she rang her bell mechanically for Sibby at her usual hour, came down, poured out breakfast, and ordered dinner as usual, then returned to her painting-room. If addressed, she gave a vacant look and a brief matter-of-fact reply, and volunteered nothing, nor attempted any employment. She seemed neither to care nor comprehend when told that Wilmet had had a quiet night, sat mazed and unhearing when Clement read, Angela roamed in and out like an unquiet spirit, as her brothers and sisters consulted in her presence, all feeling what it was to see her for the first time devoid of her own peculiar comforter.
Stella watched over her incessantly, and sat writing letters in the painting-room. Poor little bride—what letters they were to bear the date of her eighteenth birthday and her first Stella Eudora Audley's! About one o'clock, however, there was a shuffling sound of feet, a rattling of the lock, and little Gerald came breathlessly stumbling into the room, and in a moment was clasping his arms round Geraldine, 'Chérie, Chérie! you aren't gone too. Keep me, keep me!'
'My Gerald, my boy, my own!' He was on her lap, in her arms, and they were kissing each other with passionate fervour. 'Oh! Chérie, my back does ache so. I came all the way and up the stairs. Oh! my back.'
'My dear little man! There,' and Stella helped to place him on his couch, where she hung over him, the dumb spell broken by force of the little hands that clutched her fast.