“Come, dear, let us find your hat and go. I have a carriage waiting at the door. But would you like some breakfast first?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” murmured the wretched victim, going docilely enough out of the room, and downstairs to the kitchen, where Cousin Tab was bustling about, giving orders to Nick, who stopped and stared in wonder.
“We would like some tea, please,” the attendant said civilly, sitting down with Eva’s cold little hand still fast in her own.
How familiar the old place looked outdoors, with the lilacs swelling and pushing out their purple buds in the sunshine. Eva remembered the last time she had been in the dear old kitchen that fatal Hallowe’en, when she had been refused leave to go on the hay ride. Oh, the changes since that night!
And now gran’ther was dead, and she was being sent away, never to return, because Stony Ledge belonged to the twins now. They had made him disinherit her. He had told her so.
She stifled a bursting sob, because she was afraid of a sharp reproof from the glowering spinster, and the tears brimmed over in her eyes and rained down her cheeks.
A meal was soon spread, but Eva found it impossible to swallow a mouthful. All her hunger had fled, thinking of her terrible bereavement, and when the attendant had satisfied her appetite she followed her in silent despair out to the closed carriage in which she had come from Clarksburg.
Several of the neighbors who had heard of Eva’s flight from the asylum, and her return, were waiting curiously about the door, and she looked at them with a wistful glance, as if imploring their pity.
But no one spoke to her, no one held out a friendly hand, and in silence she passed to the carriage with a mute farewell in her heart to the dear old man lying dead upstairs.
The carriage was closed, and as it rolled away along the pleasant country road she turned to the attendant with a passionate protest, crying: