"You must prove that your news is true," she said, "before venturing to condole with my brother or with me; and Mrs. Wymans—we know each other very slightly, and I must ask you to be so very kind as to leave me."
Mrs. Wymans, a woman upon whom it was very difficult indeed to make any impression, was, for once in her life, completely taken aback by the sudden assertion of herself in a woman she had looked upon as an amiable fool. Her farewells were uttered with rapidity, and she left the room and the house quite unable to comprehend how her visit had failed, or why it was she was made to feel that her intrusion was an impertinence. Mrs. Dorriman, left alone, tried to collect her thoughts and not to take this story for granted. If it was true, even that the child was dead, why did not Grace or Jean or some one telegraph?
All at once what she had dreaded and expected came to her—once again a telegram was brought to her.
"Poor Margaret in frightful distress—her child is dead—scarlet fever."
The relief of this last information, after all she had dreaded, broke her down. She sobbed for some moments very piteously.
Then she went to Mr. Sandford and astonished him by the way she put the matter before him.
"It is such a relief!" she began, incoherently, and not telling him what the relief was: then she added, the tears rolling over her face, "Poor Margaret's child is dead!"
Mr. Sandford was shocked, but failed to understand why this news, which affected him so slightly, was a relief.
"Was anything wrong about the child?" he asked.
"Wrong with it?"