John gave this promise to the honest fellows, and then went slowly and sadly back to make his mournful report.
During John's absence Zillah had been waiting in an agony of suspense, in which Mathilde made feeble efforts to console her. Wringing her hands, she walked up and down in front of the house; and at length, when she heard footsteps coming along the road, she rushed in that direction. She recognized John. So great was her excitement that she could not utter one word. She clutched his arm in a convulsive grasp. John said nothing. It was easier for him to be silent. In fact he had something which was more eloquent than words. He mournfully held out the basket and the hat.
In an instant Zillah recognized them. She shrieked, and fell speechless and senseless on the hard ground.
CHAPTER XXVII.
AN ASTOUNDING LETTER.
It needed but this new calamity to complete the sum of Zillah's griefs. She had supposed that she had already suffered as much as she could. The loss of her father, the loss of the Earl, the separation from Mrs. Hart, were each successive stages in the descending scale of her calamities. Nor was the least of these that Indian letter which had sent her into voluntary banishment from her home. It was not till all was over that she learned how completely her thoughts had associated themselves with the plans of the Earl, and how insensibly her whole future had become penetrated with plans about Guy, The overthrow of all this was bitter; but this, and all other griefs, were forgotten in the force of this new sorrow, which, while it was the last, was in reality the greatest. Now, for the first time, she felt how dear Hilda had been to her. She had been more than a friend--she had been an elder sister. Now, to Zillah's affectionate heart, there came the recollection of all the patient love, the kind forbearance, and the wise counsel of this matchless friend. Since childhood they had been inseparable. Hilda had rivaled even her doting father in perfect submission to all her caprices, and indulgence of all her whims. Zillah had matured so rapidly, and had changed so completely, that she now looked upon her former willful and passionate childhood with impatience, and could estimate at its full value that wonderful meekness with which Hilda had endured her wayward and imperious nature. Not one recollection of Hilda came to her but was full of incidents of a love and devotion passing the love of a sister.
It was now, since she had lost her, that she learned to estimate her, as she thought, at her full value. That loss seemed to her the greatest of all; worse than that of the Earl; worse even than that of her father. Never more should she experience that tender love, that wise patience, that unruffled serenity, which she had always known from Hilda. Never more should she possess one devoted friend--the true and tried friend of a life--to whom she might go in any sorrow, and know and feel that she would receive the sympathy of love and the counsel of wisdom. Nevermore--no, nevermore! Such was the refrain that seemed constantly to ring in her ears, and she found herself murmuring those despairing lines of Poe, where the solitary word of the Raven seems
"Caught from some unhappy master whom unmerciful Disaster
Followed fast and followed faster till his songs one burden bore--
Till the dirges of his Hope that melancholy burden bore