“It is the scent of the narcissus; it is too strong for you,” he suggested.
“No,” she gasped. “But a most awful feeling came over me. Something is going to happen, I am sure of it.”
He looked perplexed. She dropped the narcissus from her hand, and he picked it up and put it on the farther side of the bench, still clinging to his own theory that it was the cause of her faintness. Her face, which a moment before had been so bright, was now white as the flower itself, and the look of suffering in it touched him.
His heart began to beat a little uneasily when he saw a servant approaching them from the house.
“She is right,” he thought to himself. “What on earth can it be?”
“Master asked me to give you this, Miss Cecil,” said the maid, handing her a little penciled note.
She sat up hastily, making a desperate effort to look as if nothing were wrong with her. The servant went back to the house, and Frithiof waited anxiously to hear what the note was about. She read it through and then handed it to him.
It ran as follows:
“Mr. Grantley has come, and wishes to see the children. He will not take them away for a few days, but you had better bring them down to see him.”
“He is out of prison!” exclaimed Frithiof. “But surely his time is not up yet. I thought he had five years?”