“I supposed you carelessly ran against me,” she said; “and it hurt me so I didn’t know what I was doing. Pray, don’t cry that way. You’ll raise the house;” and she took hold of Alice’s shoulder.
“I wish she would,” muttered Luce; and, stooping down, she whispered: “Screech louder, so as to fotch Marster Frederic, and tell him jest how she done sarved you!”
But nothing could be further from Alice’s mind than crying for effect. It was not so much the indignity she had suffered, nor yet the pain of the blow which made her weep so bitterly. It was rather the utter sense of desolation, the feeling that her last hope had drifted away with the certainty of Marian’s death, and for a time she wept on passionately; while Isabel, with a hurricane in her bosom, walked the floor, wondering if her perfidy would ever be discovered, and feeling that she cared but little now whether it were, or not. Suspense was terrible, and when the violence of Alice’s sobs had subsided, she said to her:
“Where is Marian, and when is she coming home?”
“Oh, never, never!” answered the child. “She can’t come back, for she’s dead now, Marian is;” and Alice covered her face again with her hands.
“Dead!” exclaimed Isabel, in a far different voice from that in which she had spoken before. “What do you mean?” and passing her arm very caressingly around the little figure lying on the lounge, she continued: “I am sorry I struck you, Alice. I didn’t know what I was doing, and you must forgive me, will you, darling? There, dry your eyes, and tell me all about poor Marian. When did she die, and where?”
As well as she could for her tears, Alice told what she knew, and satisfied that she was in no way implicated, Isabel became still more amiable, even speaking pleasantly to Luce and telling her she might do what she pleased the remainder of the evening.
“Of course I shouldn’t think of attending the party now, even if I were not so dreadfully burned. Poor Frederic! how badly he must feel!”
“He does,” said Alice, “and he cried, too.”
Isabel curled her proud lip contemptuously, and dipping her handkerchief again in the water, she applied it to her blistered ear, thinking to herself that he would probably be easily consoled. It would be proper, too, for her to commence the consoling process at once, by expressing her sympathy; and leaving Alice alone she went to the library where Frederic still was sitting, so absorbed in his own sad reflections that he did not observe her approach until she said, “Alice tells me you have heard from Marian,” then he started suddenly, and turning toward her, answered, “Yes, you can read what is written here if you like,” and he passed her McVicar’s letter.