In a trice Queenie was at the door, feeling certain that the recreant Phil had driven over with his sisters, as he sometimes did. But only Ethel and Grace were there, and it struck Queenie that there was something a little strange in their manner, while Grace had evidently been crying.
“I am so glad you have come!” she said, as she led the way into the house. “I have been so lonely to-day, with not a person to see me except the major and Anna, who were here a few moments this morning, and who are so absorbed in each other as to be of no account to any one else. I do believe he is in earnest, and means to marry her; and then won’t we have to bow to my Lady Rossiter! Where’s Phil, and why has not he been here to-day?”
“Phil has gone; you surely knew that, or, at least, that he was going; he was here yesterday,” Ethel said; and in her voice there was a hardness, as if her cousin were trifling with her thus to ask for her brother.
But she knew better when she saw how white Queenie grew, as she repeated after her:
“Gone, and I knew of his going! You are mistaken; I know nothing. Where has he gone?”
“To India!” Ethel said.
And then Reinette grasped the chair near which she was standing with both hands, and leaning heavily upon it, asked, in a half whisper, for something was choking her so that she could not speak aloud:
“To India! For what? And how long will he be gone?”
As rapidly as possible Ethel told all she knew of a matter which had taken them so by surprise, and which had so affected her mother that she was sick in bed.
For a moment Queenie did not speak, but stood staring at Ethel, who, sure that she was in fault, went pitilessly on: