Graeme’s head drooped down on the table. If she had spoken a word, it must have been with a great burst of weeping. She trembled from head to foot in her effort to keep herself quiet. Her father watched her for a moment.
“Graeme, you are not grudging your sister to such blessedness?”
“Not now, papa,” whispered she, heavily. “I am almost willing now.”
“What is the happiest life here—and Menie’s has been happy—to the blessedness of the rest which I confidently believe awaits her, dear child?”
“It is not that I grudge to let her go, but that I fear to be left behind.”
“Ay, love! But we must bide God’s time. And you will have your brothers and Rose, and you are young, and time heals sore wounds in young hearts.”
Graeme’s head drooped lower. She was weeping unrestrainedly but quietly now. Her father went on—
“And afterwards you will have many things to comfort you. I used to think in the time of my sorrow, that its suddenness added to its bitterness. If it had ever come into my mind that your mother might leave me, I might have borne it better, I thought. But God knows. There are some things for which we cannot prepare.”
There was a long silence.
“Graeme, I have something which I must say to you,” said her father, and his voice showed that he was speaking with an effort. “If the time comes—when the time comes—my child, I grieve to give you pain, but what I have to say had best be said now; it will bring the time no nearer. My child, I have something to say to you of the time when we shall no longer be together—” Graeme did not move.