"He's had a nasty illness, and the doctor thinks he may have more attacks of the kind. He does not think him the strong man he looks."
"Then perhaps he is doing some act of charity as a compromise with Providence," said the lady; "just as some men who have never been charitable or even just leave their wealth to some charity, as a sort of make-up."
So her brother was ill! This, perhaps, was why he had sent for her. But the two girls, who could they be? These two new ideas so suddenly presented to her made Mrs. Dorriman oblivious to all that was going on. She would have young girls with her and so she would not be alone, and none but those who have tried it, know how depressing long-continued loneliness is, especially to one who (like Mrs. Dorriman) was by temperament, one of the women who cling to others, and to whom acting and thinking for herself was perpetual grief and pain.
From the bewilderment of this future, which looked so much brighter to her with those figures in the foreground, she was once more roused by hearing, this time, not her brother's but her own name mentioned.
"About Mrs. Dorriman; no one really knows the rights of that story. Dorriman was as good a man as ever lived, and he had heaps of money when Sandford lost his. How it all changed hands is more than any one knows, but Dorriman died poor, and Sandford lives rich. One day the truth may get known."
"The widow lives, does she not? I think some one said so," and the lady smiled as though there was something amusing in the fact of Mrs. Dorriman's existence.
Poor Mrs. Dorriman, shrinking from it and yet impelled by a sense of right to speak, feeling that she ought to have spoken before, now leaned forward and said in her sweet, clear, timid voice, "I am sorry; I should have told you before. I am Mrs. Dorriman. I am going to my brother Mr. Sandford's house."
Then, with a heightened colour, she leaned back again.
The three talkers, who were a neighbouring manufacturer, his wife, and a friend, were naturally taken aback and made profuse apologies to her.
Then the lady, a Mrs. Wymans, said, with her usual smile,