"I wish Sara would come!"
"Sara?" repeated Mark, halting in his monotonous promenade.
"I wrote to her to come."
She spoke the words half defiantly. Sara, in consequence of the discovery of Mr. Dick Davenal, had come to see them once; but she was not encouraged to repeat the visit. Mark especially was against it. "If we have them coming here, we may get dropped upon," he had said to his wife; "it would never do." But poor Caroline, wearied out with the wretched loneliness that seemed to continue month after month, and to have no end, had at length written to her cousin.
"Why did you not tell me, Caroline?"
"You might have forbidden me."
"It's just what I should have done. We don't want her here. What good will she do?"
"What good will anything in the world do? I wish I was out of it!"
Mark Cray began to ask himself the question whether the expected visit could be stopped now. He had an intense dislike to meet Sara Davenal; we all shrink from meeting those whom we have injured directly or indirectly. But the question was set at rest by Sara's entrance, and Mark, after a short greeting, disappeared.
All Caroline did for the first quarter of an hour was to sob hysterically. Sara, in slighter mourning now, unfastened the white crape strings of her straw bonnet, and sat over her in dismay, her sweet face full of compassion for the change she saw.