Lady Isabel dropped her face upon her hands.
“What did your papa answer?” she breathed.
“I don’t know. Nothing, I think; he was talking to Barbara. But it was very stupid of Lucy, because Wilson has told her over and over again that she must never talk of Lady Isabel to papa. Miss Manning told her so too. When we got home, and Wilson heard of it, she said Lucy deserved a good shaking.”
“Why must not Lady Isabel be talked of to him?”
A moment after the question had left her lips, she wondered what possessed her to give utterance to it.
“I’ll tell you,” said William in a whisper. “She ran away from papa. Lucy talks nonsense about her having been kidnapped, but she knows nothing. I do, though they don’t think it, perhaps.”
“She may be among the redeemed, some time, William, and you with her.”
He fell back on the sofa-pillow with a weary sigh, and lay in silence. Lady Isabel shaded her face, and remained in silence also. Soon she was aroused from it; William was in a fit of loud, sobbing tears.
“Oh, I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die! Why should I go and leave papa and Lucy?”
She hung over him; she clasped her arms around him; her tears, her sobs, mingling with his. She whispered to him sweet and soothing words; she placed him so that he might sob out his grief upon her bosom; and in a little while the paroxysm had passed.