"Send Mrs. Liston here," he says to the servant who answers.
This gray twilight hour is haunted for him, with melancholy flitting faces, dead and gone. He will have Mrs. Liston in to sing and play and exorcise the ghosts. Nobody ever sang Scotch songs or played Scotch melodies half so sweetly, thinks the worn old man, as his little companion.
The door opens and she enters. Her tread, her touch, her garments, are always soft and noiseless. She comes gliding forward in the gloaming, not unlike a ghost herself. Her pale face seems almost startlingly pale in contrast with the black dress she wears. In its whiteness her great dusk eyes look bigger and blacker than ever. It strikes Mr. Darcy.
"Child," he says, "how pale you are. Come over here and let me look at you. You are more like a spirit of the twilight than a young lady of the period."
He draws her affectionately to him, and she sinks on her knees by his chair. There is no light but the dull glow of the fire; he tilts up her chin, and gazes smilingly down into the lovely sombre eyes.
"'Oh, fair, pale Margaret,'" he quotes. "Little one, what is it? You promised to tell me sometime. Why not to-night?"
"Why not to-night?" she repeats. "To-night be it, then. But first, is that a letter on the table?"
"Oh, by-the-by, yes—I nearly forgot all about it. Another letter from our mated turtle doves in Florida. I see by the postmark they are in Florida now. I have kept it for you to read, as usual."
She takes it quite calmly; she knows that big, bold chirography well, and the day comes back to her when Mr. Liston brought to the Chelsea cottage the brief, pitiless note in the same hand—her death warrant. She seats herself on a hassock near the big invalid chair, and by the light of the fire reads Laurence Thorndyke's letter.
It is the gay letter of a happy bridegroom whose bride bends over his shoulder smiling while he writes. He tells of their travels, of how well and handsome Helen is looking; that in another month for certain they will be at home. And with best love and all the kisses he can spare from Nella, he is, as ever, his affectionate nephew, Laurence Thorndyke.