"No, sir. I think Mr. Cray took your patients. He has been here"----
"I know all about that," interrupted the doctor.
He passed Neal, and went on to the garden-parlour, a favourite room of his daughter's. She was there alone, seated before the open glass doors. How peaceful it all looked! The green lawn stretching out in front, the bright hues of the autumn flowers, the calm purity of the dark blue sky lying in the stillness of the Day of Rest. Sara Davenal had that good Book upon her lap: but she was not then reading it. She had closed it in deep thought. Her sweet face was turned upwards, her eyes were filled with tears from the intensity of her gaze; it seemed that she was looking for something in the autumn sky. The extreme calm, the aspect of peace, struck forcibly on the senses of Dr. Davenal, and he remembered it in the days to come. It was the last day of peace for him; it was the last day of peace for Sara; henceforth the world was to change for both of them. Ere the morrow's sun should rise, a great care, a great trouble, would be tugging at their heartstrings; a skeleton would be there to keep; a secret, that must be hidden for very safety's sake, would have taken up its abode there.
Dr. Davenal was upon her so quickly that she could not conceal her glistening eyes. She started up to welcome him, and laid down the book. Owing to that most attentive habit of Neal's, of being on the watch and opening the door before people could get to it, she had not heard him come home.
"O papa, is it you? You have been away a long while."
"Sit down," he said, pressing her into her chair again. "What's the grief, Sara?"
"No grief, papa. I was only thinking."
"What about? The accident last night?"
"O no, not that. I hear that everybody's going on quite well. I was thinking--I was wondering--somehow I often get thinking on these things on a Sunday, when I am sitting alone, and the sky seems so calm and near," she broke off.
"Well, what were you thinking?"