Volume Three—Chapter Six.
The Dowager Aroused—the Dowager Struck Down!
Dead!
“What? Susan dead!” She could not believe it; she wouldn’t, and that was a fact. “Stuff and nonsense! don’t tell me,” she exclaimed; “I won’t believe it.”
“But, my dear madam,” interposed Mr Trump, who had come down especially to The Poplars, for the purpose of breaking the news, and considering what was to be done on receiving Miss Kingscott’s letter. “But, my dear madam, I have received the most satisfactory intelligence about the unfortunate event, and we must do something.”
“Nonsense! don’t tell me! Susan dead, indeed! What should make her die? She is a hale, strong girl, much stronger than I am, and I am not going to die yet. It’s all some lying nonsense or other; that woman, the governess, who wrote to you, is capable of anything, after what you told me of her helping that villain to go away—and she as meek as a mouse all the time as if butter would not melt in her mouth! Stuff and nonsense! It’s all a lie from beginning to end.” But the old dowager did not speak with her customary absolute quality of expression. There was a lingering dread in her voice as if she wanted to be assured of the truth of what she herself had declared, and as if she feared the worst to be confirmed.
Mr Trump, from his previous knowledge of the family, did not think that Mrs Hartshorne would grieve very much about her daughter, and so he did not mince matters. He took out Miss Kingscott’s letter, and showed it her.
The old lady grasped it with trembling hands, and read it from first to last in silence, although her fingers shook, and the paper rustled in her clutch.
“I can’t read it,” she said, after a long pause, in a faint voice, without its usual querulous intonation. “My eyes are weak; they are not so strong as they were. The light to-day is very bad. That handwriting is so small, I cannot make it out. Here, take the worthless thing and read it out to me yourself. I cannot make head or tail of it.”
Mr Trump resumed possession of the document; his sight was not deficient, nor the light too bad for him, or the calligraphy beyond his comprehension. He read as follows, in his loud, clear voice:—