There was so much grave meaning in his tone that Sara looked up involuntarily. He laughed at her earnest face.
"O Edward! must you go!"
"There's no help for it. We go to Malta first. India--as we suppose--afterwards."
"Papa may be dead before you return."
"No, no! I trust not."
"It will be as though he had no children!" she exclaimed, almost passionately, in her love for her father, in her grief. "Richard dead; you gone: he will have none left."
"He will have you, Sara."
"I! Who am I?"
"The best of us. You have given him no grief in all your life; I and poor Dick have: plenty. It is best as it is, Sara."
She could scarcely speak for the sobs that were rising. She strove bravely to beat them down, for Sara Davenal's was an undemonstrative nature, and could not bear that its signs of emotion should be betrayed outwardly. She loved her brother greatly; even the more, as the doctor did, for the loss of Richard; and this going abroad for an indefinite period, perhaps for ever, rang in her ears as the very knell of hope. He might never return: he might go away, as Richard had, only to die.