Miss Wynward let her into the hall and ushered her into a side room.
“You will excuse my asking if you are a friend of her ladyship’s,” she said.
“I can hardly call myself a friend,” replied Margaret, “but I stayed with her in the same hotel at Heyst last summer, and I knew the dear boy who is dead. I was most grieved to hear of his death, and naturally anxious to enquire after the Baroness. But if she is too upset to see me, of course I would not think of forcing my presence upon her!”
“I don’t think her ladyship would object to receiving any friend, but I am not sure if she would recognise you!”
“Not recognise me? It is not three months since we parted.”
“You do not understand me! Our dear boy’s death was so sudden—I have been with him since he was five years old, so you will forgive my mentioning him in such a fashion—that it has had a terrible effect upon his poor mother. In fact she is paralysed! The medical men think the paralysis is confined to the lower limbs, but at present they are unable to decide definitely, as the Baroness has not opened her lips since the event occurred.”
“Oh! poor Madame Gobelli!” cried Margaret, tearfully, “I felt sure she loved him under all her apparent roughness and indifference!”
“Yes! I have been with them so long, that I know her manner amounted at times to cruelty, but she did not mean it to be so! She thought to make him hardy and independent, instead of which it had just the opposite effect! But she is paying bitterly for it now! I really think his death will kill her, though the doctors laugh at my fears!”
“I—I—too have lost my only child, my precious little baby,” replied Margaret, encouraged by the sympathetic tenderness in the other woman’s eyes, “and I thought also at first that I must die—that I could not live without her—but God is so good, and there is such comfort in the thought that whatever we may suffer, our darlings have missed all the bitterness and sin and disappointments of this world, that at last—that is, sometimes—one feels almost thankful that they are safe with Him!”
“Ah! Madame Gobelli has not your hope and trust, Madam!” said Miss Wynward, “if she had, she would be a better and happier woman. But I must tell you that she is in the same room as Bobby! She will not be moved from there, but lies on the couch where we placed her when she fell, stricken with the paralysis, gazing at the corpse!”