[254]
]CHAPTER XXIII.
LITTLE FAITHFUL MEG.
“And shadow, and silence, and sadness
Were hanging over all.”
Pip had a time of unhappiness almost as great as that Nellie had gone through.
He was playing chess at the Courtneys to keep from thinking, when Alan came in with the news that Meg had the fever.
All the colour dropped from his brown, handsome face; he started up in his place, the queen he had just captured still in his hand; he went out of the room and out of the house without a word. Andrew caught him up when he had gone some hundred yards up the road.
“Here’s your hat, old fellow,” he said, and Pip took it without thanks and walked on.
Little faithful Meg, whose worst fault had been loving him too well to let him spoil his life! And he had shaken her aside time after time when she [255] ]had tried to end the quarrel—he had told her he would never forgive her!
And now, perhaps, he would never have the chance.
He pulled back the gate at Misrule with fingers as nerveless as the veriest girl; he turned to go up to the house the short way, by the pittosporum hedge. There was a little dark heap of something on the wet grass in front of him; he touched it with his foot, and then bent down in horror.