What should I say? How frame the words necessary for my task? With my hands and lips trembling, brain and heart alike beating, I was about to speak incoherently, when some one came into the room.
Emily, as I thought at first; but when she came nearer the window I saw that it was Mrs. Chandos. Being left alone for an instant, she had taken the opportunity to come in search of Sir Harry.
"I have not seen you since the Indian mail came in this morning," she said to him. "Why have you not been near me?"
"The day has been a busy one for me," he answered, speaking with the gentleness that one uses to a child. "Many things have had to be seen to."
"It is sad news."
"Very." And the ring of pain in his voice no one could mistake. "Thomas would have come home now."
"Instead of that, we shall never see him again; and you, they tell me, are Sir Harry Chandos. Who would have thought once that you would ever inherit!"
"Strange changes take place," was his reply, spoken altogether in a different tone, as if he did not care to encourage in her any reminiscence of the past.
"It is so singular that they should both die together. At least, die to us. That when we were mourning for the one, news should arrive of the death of the other."
"Very singular. But it enables us to mourn openly, Ethel."