Miss Leicester came down at ten o'clock for prayers. The girls all stood up while she read the evening hymn; as a rule they sang it, but there could be no singing at St. Dorothy's to-night. At the end of her short prayer, she said a word or two about Kate.
"Spare her, if possible, O Father," said the principal, in her solemn voice; "but, oh, in any case help us to say, Thy will be done."
"I can't say it; I can't!" whispered poor Molly, to her own struggling heart. "Oh, God! please remember what I promised to you in the cathedral."
Then she went upstairs with the others.
CHAPTER XVII.
SUSPENSE.
THE night passed somehow. When Molly laid her tired head on her pillow she fell asleep. She awoke quickly, however, aroused by the sound of wheels on the gravel sweep outside the silent house. Remembrance came quickly to her, and she knew what had happened, the great specialist from London had arrived. Molly wondered if Cecil would perhaps come to visit her. Her heart began to beat wildly; she sat up in bed. Kate's room was in a distant part of the house, but the sound of rather heavy footsteps coming up the stairs came distinctly to Molly's ears; they died away in the distance. Once again there was silence; it was broken, at long intervals, by the hurried closing of a door, by rapid but quiet footsteps, then again followed the awful, awful quiet—that sort of quiet which tries a young and anxious heart as nothing else can do in all the world.
Molly lit her candle; she took down a book of history from her shelves, and tried in vain to read; her eyes followed the printed words without in the least taking in their sense.