“He isn't at home,” said Elmira; “something has happened at Simon Basset's—I don't know what. A boy came after Jerome, and he hurried off. Father's gone too.” Elmira blushed all over her face and neck as she spoke. “Jerome will be sorry he wasn't at home,” she added. She had a curious sense of innocent confusion over the situation.
Mrs. Edwards blushed too, like an echo, though she gave her little dark head an impatient toss.
“Then please ask your brother if he will be so kind as to come to the Squire's after supper to-night,” she returned, in her smart, prettily dictatorial way, and took leave at once, though Elmira urged her politely to come in and rest and wait for her brother's return.
She gave the message to Jerome when he came home. “What do you suppose she wants of you?” she asked, wonderingly. Jerome shook his head.
“Why, you look as white as a sheet!” said Elmira, staring at him.
“I've seen enough this afternoon to make any man look white,” Jerome replied, evasively.
“Well, I suppose you have; it is awful about Simon Basset,” Elmira assented, shudderingly.
Jerome had to force himself to his work after he had received Mrs. Merritt's message. The tragedy of Simon Basset had given him a terrible shock, and now this last set his nerves in a tumult in spite of himself.
“What can she want?” he questioned, over and over. “Shall I see Lucina? What can her mother have to say to me?”
One minute, thinking of Simon Basset, he stood convicted, to his shame, of the utter despicableness of all his desires pertaining to the earth and the flesh, by that clear apprehension of eternity which often comes to one at the sight of sudden death. He settled with himself that wealth and success and learning, and love itself even, where as nothing beside that one surety of eternity, which holds the sequence of good and evil, and is of the spirit.