“Last night. She is in London, or was,—but wrote she was going on a journey and then was coming home. I shall believe that when I see her. Mother has the letter, and will be glad to see you,” was Bessie’s reply, and Hugh went into the pleasant, sunny room where the blind woman was sitting, with her hands folded on her lap and a listening expression on her face.
“Oh, Hugh,” she exclaimed, “I am glad you have come. I want to talk to you.”
Straightening her widow’s cap, which was a little awry, as deftly as a woman could have done, he sat down beside her, while she continued, as she drew a letter from her bosom, where she always kept Milly’s last. “I heard from Milly last night. I am afraid she is not happy, but she is coming home by and by. She says so. Read it, please.”
Taking the letter he began to read:
“London, May —, 18—.
“Darling Mother:—I am in London, but shall not stay long, for I am going on a journey, and it may be weeks, if not months, before I can write you again. But don’t worry. If anything happens to me you will know it. I am quite well and—oh, mother, I never loved you as I do now or needed your prayers so much. Pray for me. I can’t pray for myself, but I’d give half my life to put my arms around your neck and look into your dear, blind eyes, which, if they could see, would not know me, I am so changed. My hair fell out when I was so sick in Naples, and is not the same color it used to be. Everything is different. Oh, if I could see you, and I shall in the fall, if I live.
“Give my love to Tom and Bessie, and tell Hugh,——No, don’t tell him anything. God bless you, darling mother. Good-bye,
“From
“Mildred F. Leach.”
Hugh’s face was a study as he read this letter, which sounded like a cry for help from an aching heart. Was Milly unhappy, and if so, why? he asked himself as he still held the letter with his eyes fixed upon the words “Tell Hugh——No, don’t tell him anything.” Did they mean that in her trouble she had for a moment turned to him, he wondered, but quickly put that thought aside. She had been too long silent to think of him now; and he was content that it should be so. His liking for her had been but a boy’s fancy for a little girl, he reasoned, and yet, as he held the letter in his hand, it seemed to bring Milly very near to him, and he saw her plainly as she looked when entering Thornton Park that morning so long ago. “I felt I was losing her then. I am sure of it now,” he was thinking, when Mrs. Leach asked what he thought of Milly’s letter, and where he supposed she was going, and what ailed her.