When Constance saw her, she rose quickly with the first expression of joy that had escaped her lips for many a day.
“Thank God!” she exclaimed. “At last!”
“At last,” Grace answered quietly. “One thing only, Constance,” she continued after a pause. “I will be myself again. But do not talk of going away, and never speak of what has happened.”
“I never will, dear,” answered the older girl.
There had been many inquiries made at the house by messengers from Mrs. Trimm, but neither she, nor Mamie nor George had ventured to approach the place upon which such awful sorrow had descended. They had been surprised at not learning that the two sisters had left their country-seat, and had made all sorts of conjectures concerning their delay in going away, but they gradually became accustomed to the idea that Grace might prefer to stay where she was.
“It would kill me!” Totty exclaimed with much emphasis.
“I could not do it,” said Mamie, looking at George and feeling suddenly how hateful the sight of the river would have been to her if she had not seen his eyes open on that terrible day when he lay like dead before her.
“I would not, whether I could or not,” George said. And he on his part wondered what he would have felt, had Constance or Mamie, or both, perished instead of John Bond. A slight shiver ran through him, and told him that he would have felt something he had never experienced before.
One morning when they were all at breakfast a note was brought to George in a handwriting he did not recognise, but which was oddly familiar from its resemblance to Constance’s.
“Do see what it is!” exclaimed Totty before he had time to ask permission to read it.