"Only a paper!—is there nothing more?" she asked in an unsteady voice, as she took the paper in her hand, and, recognizing Guy's handwriting, knew almost to a certainty what was before her.
"Oh, mon Dieu! vous êtes malade! J'apporterai un verre d'eau!" Pauline exclaimed, forgetting her English and adopting her mother tongue in her alarm at Daisy's white face and the peculiar tone of her voice.
"No, Pauline, stay; open the paper for me," Daisy said, feeling that it would be easier so than to read it herself, for she knew it was there, else he would never have sent her a paper and nothing more.
Delighted to be of some use, and a little gratified to open a foreign paper, Pauline tore off the wrapper, starting a little at Daisy's quick, sharp cry as she made a rent across the handwriting.
"Look, you are tearing into my name, which he wrote," Daisy said, and then remembering herself, she sank back into her seat in the garden chair, while Pauline wondered what harm there was in tearing an old soiled wrapper, and why her governess should take it so carefully in her hand and roll it up as if it had been a living thing.
There were notices of new books, and a runaway match in high life, and a suicide on Summer Street, and a golden wedding in Roxbury, and the latest fashions from Paris, into which Pauline plunged with avidity while Daisy listened like one in a dream, asking when the fashions were exhausted: "Is that all? Are there no deaths or marriages?"
Pauline had not thought of that—she would see, and she hunted through the columns till she found Guy's pencil mark, and read:
"Married, this morning, at St. Paul's Church, by the Rev. Dr. ——, assisted by the rector, Guy Thornton, Esq., of Cuylerville, to Miss Julia Hamilton, of this city."
"Yes, yes; it's very hot here, isn't it? I think I will go in," Daisy said, her fingers working nervously with the bit of paper she held.
But Pauline was too intent on the name of Thornton to hear what Daisy said, and she asked: "Is Mr. Thornton your friend?"