This characteristic letter, instead of comforting the family, plunged them into still deeper trouble on her account. Mrs. Gower wept for her darling unceasingly, and would not be comforted; Lizzie sighed and yawned, and lay on her lounge from morning till night, looking drearier than ever; and the servants went in silence and sadness about their daily business, heaving a sigh and shedding a tear over every memento that recalled poor Gipsy. Now that she was gone they found how dearly they loved her, in spite of all the scrapes and troubles she had ever cost them.
A dull, heavy, stagnant silence hung over the mansion from morning till night. There was no more banging of doors, and flying in and out, and up and down stairs, and scolding, and shouting, and singing all in one burst, now. The squire was blue-molding—fairly "running to seed," as he mournfully expressed it—for want of his little torment.
No one missed the merry little elf more than the lusty old squire, who sighed like a furnace, and sat undisturbed in his own arm-chair from one week's end to the other. Sometimes Louis would bring over Celeste, who had nearly wept her gentle eyes out for the loss of her friend, to comfort him, and the fair, loving little creature would nestle on a stool at his feet and lay her golden head in his lap, and go to sleep. And the squire would caress her fair, silken curls with his great, rough hands, and pat her white, dimpling shoulders, and turn away with a half groan; for she was not Gipsy!
As for poor Archie, he took to wandering in the woods and shooting unoffending birds and rabbits, because it was Gipsy's favorite sport, and looked as doleful as though he had lost every friend in the world.
"Fall in love with any one else," indeed! Master Archie scorned the idea, and began to have sundry visions of joining the monks of La Trappe as soon as he grew old enough. This and his other threats of going to sea, of enlisting, of killing somebody, by way of relieving his spirits, kept poor Celeste trembling with fear for him from morning till night. And in her own gentle way she would put her arms round his neck and cry on his shoulder, and beg of him not to say such naughty things, for that Gipsy would come back yet—she knew that she would.
But Minnette, who didn't care a straw whether Gipsy ever came back or not, would laugh her short, deriding laugh, and advise him to become a Sister of Charity at once. And Celeste said she would be one when she grew up, and then she would be always near to comfort him. And Minnette's taunts always sent poor Archie off to the woods in a more heart-broken state of mind than ever before.
CHAPTER XV.
THE "STAR OF THE VALLEY."
——"Face and figure of a child,
Though too calm, you think, and tender,
For the childhood you would lend her."—Browning.