Griselda's face was blank for a moment. Then on a sudden she was bent double in a gale of wild, hysterical laughter. Never have I known her so shaken by meaningless cachinnation. Perhaps her own nerves are no better than mine. Even now I still hear her rattling deeply from time to time like muffled thunder. But I don't care now. What a relief to get it over!
It is nearly bedtime. Casting over the events of the day, I cannot but conclude that my own will has played too small a part in the whole matter.
I must see Gertrude to-morrow in good time and acquaint her with my desire to run over to Florence before we are married and look up Biagi's new material bearing upon the blessed old heathen, Brunetto Latini. Since Gertrude desires me to be great and famous, she cannot deny me the opportunity to discover how a great and famous man accomplished the trick. Besides, what has been delayed three years can surely support a further delay of three months.
But, good heavens! What is this? Voices—the scuffling of feet in the hallway—what army is invading me at this hour! I believe I hear children's voices—and a scream from Griselda, who has never screamed in her life!
CHAPTER III
Laura—my dear sister Laura—is dead! Her children are with me!
Without warning she dropped suddenly under her burdens and with her dying breath confided her children to me—me!
That one cataclysmic fact has taken its abode in my brain and numbed it as well as all my nerves to a chill and deadly paralysis that excludes everything else. It still seems wholly unbelievable—some nightmare from which I shall awake with a vast sickly sort of relief to the old custom of my tranquil life.
The turbulence and the pain of the last three days, however, are still lashing about me like the angry waves after a tempest, in a manner too realistic for any dream. I am broad awake now, I know, and for hours I have been blankly staring into a very abyss of darkness.
What will happen or what I shall do next, I haven't the shadow of an idea.