People had not long to wait for the evil news. Lord Calderwood had been seized with a paralytic stroke—his third attack—at ten o'clock the previous night, and had expired at half-past eight that morning. There could be no wedding that day—nor for many days and weeks to come.
"O, Geraldine, my poor Geraldine, let me go to her!" cried Lady Laura, disengaging herself from her husband's arms and rushing upstairs. Mr. Armstrong hurried after her.
"Laura, my sweet girl, don't agitate yourself; consider yourself," he cried, and followed, with Lady Louisa sobbing and wailing behind him. Geraldine had not left her room yet. The ill news was to find her on the threshold, calm and lovely in the splendour of her bridal dress.
* * * * *
CHAPTER XVII.
"'TIS DEEPEST WINTER IN LORD TIMOR'S PURSE."
Before nightfall—before the evening which was to have been enlivened by a dinner-party and a carpet-dance, and while bride and bridegroom should have been speeding southwards to that noble Kentish mansion which his uncle had lent George Fairfax—before the rooks flew homeward across the woods beyond Hale—there had been a general flight from the Castle. People were anxious to leave the mourners alone with their grief, and even the most intimate felt more or less in the way, though Mr. Armstrong entreated that there might be no hurry, no inconvenience for any one.
"Poor Laura won't be fit to be seen for a day or two," he said, "and of course I shall have to go up to town for the funeral; but that need make no difference. Hale is large enough for every one, and it will be a comfort to her by-and-by to find her friends round her."
Through all that dreary day Lady Laura wandered about her morning-room, alternately sobbing and talking of her father to those chosen friends with whom she held little interviews.
Her sisters Louisa and Emily were with her for the greater part of the time, echoing her lamentations like a feeble chorus. Geraldine kept her room, and would see no one—not even him who was to have been her bridegroom, and who might have supposed that he had the chiefest right to console her in this sudden affliction.