It was Mr. Heywood who at length broke in upon the glad interview.
“Ethel, love, my dear wife,” and his hand touched her hair gently, caressingly, “she will see you now.”
Mrs. Heywood started, strained her new-found daughter once more to her bosom with a long, silent, most tender caress, and, releasing her, left the room, leaning on her husband’s arm. She needed its strong support, for she was trembling very much.
“Be calm, love,” he whispered, bending over her and just touching his lips to her fair, open brow, as he paused with her at the foot of the stairs. “One moment. I must prepare you to find your sister much changed—greatly broken in health, yet not, I think, with any dangerous disease,” he hastened to add as he saw a look of anguish come into her eyes, the color suddenly fade out of her cheek, leaving it of an almost death-like pallor.
“Thank God for that!” she whispered faintly, “but how?—what?—”
“She seems to be somewhat asthmatic and very nervous; has grown immensely fat, lost her clear complexion, vivacity of look and manner, and, I think, partially the use of her right hand also. She gave me the left in greeting.”
“Oh, Rolfe! is it so?—all that? My poor, poor dear sister!” she murmured, tears trickling down the pale cheeks.
He soothed her grief as tenderly as she would that of her little Nannette—the namesake of this beloved only sister—and at length, when she had grown calm again, half carried her up the stairs.
The Madame, listening to their approach, was threatened with a renewal of her hysterics, but Mary was equal to the emergency.