It was just like their usual kindness to come and meet me thus!
I had telegraphed to them from Liverpool, telling them the time when I might hope to be in London; and, there they were to the minute, although I had never expected them, having only informed them of my coming, in order that they might let my darling know that I was on my way to her.
I jumped out of the carriage before it stopped, in defiance of all the company’s bye-laws; and, advanced to clasp their outstretched hands. But—
What was it, that I could read in the grave kind face of the one, the glad yet sorrowful eyes of the other, before a word had passed on either side? What was it, that congealed the flood of joyful questionings, with which I went forward to meet them, in an icy lump pressing down upon my brain; and, that snapped a chord in my heart that has never vibrated since?
Min was dead!
Chapter Thirteen.
“Death.”
O sweet and strange it seems to me, that ere this day is done,
The voice, that now is speaking, may be beyond the sun—
For ever and for ever with those just souls and true—
And what is life, that we should moan? Why make we such ado?