“Miss Mirabelle, Miss Mirabelle!” he calls in wild despairing tones.
But she cannot rebuke him now for his formal address, poor little soul!
Presently her eyelids droop, and the long curling lashes rest close against cheeks that are almost ashy now.
They lift her up gently and carry her—“Home,” the home she had left only two hours before gay and blithesome as a bird and so full of life, and when it is reached they take her straight into the library, the door of which is ajar, and laying her down on the couch, they leave her, all but one, and he does not enter the room that contains her, but stands trembling near the threshold.
Another moment and the awful thing that has happened is known to all in the house, and Hargreaves shrinks away still further as father, mother, sisters of the girl he loves pass him with scared faces and stricken hearts to find Baby—so!
Not a word is spoken. At such a moment what word can be said? Even Lady Beranger bows her proud head beneath the fiat of Heaven, while Lord Beranger sobs aloud over this little one—this brightest, merriest one of all the flock.
After a moment, revived by a stimulant, Baby opens her pretty blue eyes.
“Don’t cry, governor!” she says in a voice so faint—so faint!—that it seems to come already from that distant shore. “It serves me right! I was going to leave you—I was—— ”
She stops, struggling for breath.
“Let me just see her, my lady! Oh, for God’s sake let me just go near her! I won’t dare to touch her—I won’t even dare to say good-bye!” a voice whispers so hoarsely, so brokenly, that my lady starts and turns round, but does not understand.