Mrs. Langdale recovered herself with an effort. The frozen voice seemed to give her strength.
"Have we any right to ask that?" she whispered. "No one on this side can ever know."
"Oh, I think you are wrong," Molly said. "We can't be meant to grope in outer darkness."
Mrs. Langdale whispered something about "those the gods love." She was too broken-down herself to be able to offer any solid comfort.
After a painful silence she got up and busied herself with reviving Molly's fire, which had almost gone out. She felt as she had felt only once before in her life, and that had been ten years previously, when her only child had died suddenly. She wished passionately that she were back in Calcutta with her husband. She hated the bleak English winter, the cruel English seas.
Molly lay quite still for some time, her young face drawn and stricken.
At length she got up and went to the window. It was a morning of bleak winds and shifting clouds. The sea was just visible, very far and dim and grey. She stood a long while gazing stonily out.
"Can I get you anything, darling?" said Mrs. Langdale's voice softly behind her.
"No, thank you," the girl said, without turning. "Please leave me; that's all!"
And Mrs. Langdale crept away through the hushed house to her own apartment, there to lay down her head and cry herself exhausted. Dear, gallant Charlie! Her heart ached for him. His irrepressible gaiety, his reckless generosity, these had become the attributes of a hero for ever in her eyes.