The mother went her household ways, Again she knelt in prayer; And only asked of Heaven its aid Her heavy lot to bear." L. E. L.
On leaving Frances Strickland, Amy went to poor Bertie's room to lay the fair white cross in his coffin, and was bending down over her lost darling in an agony of tears which old Hannah vainly attempted to check, when the sudden, hasty gallop of a horse away from the stables struck her ear. It was the groom going for Dr. Bernard.
Amy's mind, already unnerved and unstrung, was easily alarmed.
"Alas! Hannah," said she, drawing near the darkened window "has any accident happened that some-one rides so furiously?"
"My dear Miss Amy," replied Hannah, forgetting in her tender pity Amy's new tie, and thinking of her only as the wee child she had so lovingly nursed on her knee, "you must not be frightening yourself this way. What should have happened? God knows you've had enough to worry you. There, don't tremble that way, but let go the blind, and come away from the window."
But Hannah's persuasions and entreaties were alike useless. Amy, with fluttering anxious heart still looked out through the deepening shadows of the day, now fast drawing into evening.
Her husband was away. Oh! how she wished she could see him or hear his firm, yet for the last few days mournful step. Her heart had taken a strange fear, which she could neither shake off, nor subdue; a trembling nervous dread of some fast-coming evil.
Mr. Linchmore came up the drive, and for a moment a joyous thrill crept through her as she thought it was her husband; but no, he came nearer still, then disappeared up the terrace with Mr. Hall, and only the groom with the pony carriage was left, standing quietly as it had stood ever since she had so eagerly strained her eyes from the window.
Then once again—as it had done long, long ago—that strange, dull tramp from without smote her ear.
Meanwhile, Anne had nerved her heart as well as she could, and gone sorrowfully enough to break the sad news to Amy.