Norah did not know that the hope springing softly in the wife's heart had such sure foundation to build upon. Grace had withheld from her the fact that General Winans was coming home in May, and Norah's secret thoughts and misgivings on this subject were many.
Poor Norah had never forgiven herself for the loss of the little child that had been left in its father's care to be so strangely spirited away. She reproached herself always, in her sensitive soul feeling herself entirely to blame, and humbly wondering sometimes how Mrs. Winans could abide the sight of her, much less her daily personal attendance; while Mrs. Winans herself, always just, gentle, and considerate to her domestics as to others, never blamed her in the least, really was fond of the honest creature, and in her sensitive dread of new faces around, would not have consented to be deprived of Norah. Indeed, her whole domestic staff had entered her service when she came as a bride to Senator Winans' new and beautiful home, and were likely to remain as long as they behaved passably well. She never drew a tight rein on the poor creatures, following as nearly as she could, in her daily life, the golden rule.
A charmingly affectionate billet from Mrs. Conway, the morning succeeding their return to Ocean View, invited Grace to come out and see them, as they were all in the deepest grief for the poor, dear captain—Lulu, indeed, being excessively shocked and ill, with the physician in close attendance.
The afternoon found Gracie springing from her phaeton at the gates of Ocean View, where John, as of old, met her with an adoring smile on his dark visage.
"And what is the news with you, John?" she asked, good-naturedly, as she saw that some unusual news agitated his shallow brain. "What have you been doing all this time with yourself?"
"Only jist gittin' married, Miss Grace," he responded, with a glittering smile, "to jist the prettiest yaller gal ole mis' eber owned! You 'members of Julie, de chambermaid?"
Grace supplemented her uncontrollable smile with a solid congratulation in the shape of a bridal gift from her well-filled porte-monnaie, and swept on to the house.
Mrs. Conway and her nephew met her in the hall, both unaffectedly glad to see her, and in the midst of much whispering, they left Bruce below, and went up to Lulu's chamber.
It was so dark in here that Grace, coming directly in from the May sunshine, at first saw nothing; then, as the gloom cleared away a little, she distinguished Mrs. Clendenon's black-robed form sitting near the bed where Lulu lay, white, and still, and grief-stricken, under the white draperies, with a tiny mite of a girl-baby (prematurely hurried into the world by grief that oftenest hurries people out of it) on her arm.