"Better," answered Dora, trying to command herself; "she has shown signs of life, but they will not let you in."
"Who will not?" inquired Margaret.
"Mamma and Emily Morton; they are talking together, and they have fastened the door. Hark! you can hear them now."
Mrs Harrington's voice sounded strangely in the chamber of anxiety and fear. She was evidently in a state of the utmost excitement, and Emily's gentle answers seemed hardly listened to for an instant. Dora and Margaret gazed at each other in silent amazement; in a few minutes the bolt was hastily and angrily withdrawn, and Emily Morton entered the passage. Dora caught her dress, and was about to speak; but when she looked in her face, she felt it was impossible. Such intense suffering was expressed in every feature, in her firmly compressed lip, and the ghastly paleness of her check, and the contraction of her forehead, that Dora did not dare inquire the cause. Yet, even then, Emily had a thought for others. "Rose is better," she said, and pointed to the open door, and then, turning away, she passed in a moment from their sight.
"What can be the matter?" exclaimed Margaret.
"Mamma is angry that Rose was left, I suppose," replied Dora.
"She would have thought nothing about it, but for the accident," said Margaret, with a painful consciousness of being infinitely more to blame than Miss Morton.
"I don't know any of the particulars," observed Dora; "no one has had any time to ask; but I wish you would tell me now."
Margaret was beginning her account, when the door again opened, and Mrs Harrington seeing them in the passage, called Dora into the room, and ordered Margaret to send Morris to her immediately.
Margaret delivered the message, and then went to the school-room, where she found Miss Cunningham seated by the fire, with a book in her hand, and not only composed, but cheerful.