'Thank God for that, and all His mercy to us, Ethel;' and the long sigh, the kiss, and dewy eyes, would have told her that there had been more to exhaust him than his twelve hours' toil, even had she not partly known what weighed him down.
'Poor things!' she said.
'Both gone, Ethel, both! both!' and as he entered the drawing-room, he threw himself back in his chair, and gasped with the long-restrained feeling.
'Both!' she exclaimed. 'You don't mean that Leonard—'
'No, Ethel, his mother! Poor children, poor children!'
'Mrs. Ward! I thought she had only been taken ill yesterday evening.'
'She only then gave way—but she never had any constitution—she was done up with nursing—nothing to fall back on—sudden collapse and prostration—and that poor girl, called every way at once, fancied her asleep, and took no alarm till I came in this morning and found her pulse all but gone. We have been pouring down stimulants all day, but there was no rousing her, and she was gone the first.'
'And Mr. Ward—did he know it?'
'I thought so from the way he looked at me; but speech had long been lost, and that throat was dreadful suffering. Well, "In their death they were not divided."'
He shaded his eyes with his hand; and Ethel, leaning against his chair, could not hinder herself from a shudder at the longing those words seemed to convey. He felt her movement, and put his arm round her, saying, 'No, Ethel, do not think I envy them. I might have done so once—I had not then learnt the meaning of the discipline of being without her—no, nor what you could do for me, my child, my children.'