"Thank you," says Molly, pressing his kind old hand.
CHAPTER XXIX.
"I fain would follow love, if that could be."
—Tennyson.
Letitia in her widowed garments looks particularly handsome. All the "trappings and the signs" of woe suit well her tall, full figure, her fair and placid face.
Molly looks taller, slenderer than usual in her mourning robes. She is one of those who grow slight quickly under affliction. Her rounded cheeks have fallen in and show sad hollows; her eyes are larger, darker, and show beneath them great purple lines born of many tears.
She has not seen Luttrell since her return home,—although Letitia has,—and rarely asks for him. Her absorbing grief appears to have swallowed up all other emotions. She has not once left the house. She works little, she does not read at all; she is fast falling into a settled melancholy.
"Molly," says Letitia, "Tedcastle is in the drawing-room. He particularly asks to see you. Do not refuse him again. Even though your engagement, as you say, is at an end, still remember, dearest, how kind, how more than thoughtful, he has been in many ways since—of late——"
Her voice breaks.