The hall door opened, and Miss Agnace came out. She, too, was watching, it seemed. Dixen fell back into the shadow again.
“My child, is it you? Where have you been? Not at Mrs Brandon’s, for she has been here. We have been in such terror for you.”
“You need not have been,” said Frederica. “Where is Selina? No, Miss Agnace, I am not going in there, for I am very tired.”
She paused a moment at the foot of the stairs, looking up. A kind, half-familiar face looked down on her from above.
“Is it Col. Bentham?” said she, going up slowly. “And papa has come. Oh! papa! papa?”
Was it her father’s face she saw? It was such a face as her father’s might have been in his youth, a nobler and better face than his had ever been to her knowledge, though no such thought came into Frederica’s mind as she gazed. And who was this beside him, looking at her with Selina’s eyes, smiling on her with Selina’s smile, and calling her sister? Frederica grew pale, and trembled more and more.
“Lena,” she faltered. “Lena, is it that I am going to be ill again? or am I dreaming?”
“Fred love,” said Selina, putting her arms around her, “it is our elder brother Edgar, who has come, and our sister Cecilia, and poor papa—”
But Frederica heard no more, for there was a mist before her eyes, and a buzzing in her ears, and by-and-by she found that Miss Agnace was bathing her face, and Selina was holding her hand, with a pale anxious face. Then she heard a strange voice say,—
“She must drink this, and go to bed at once and no one is to talk to her to-night.” And that was almost the last thing she knew, till she awoke next morning with the sunshine on her face.