“Where are the girls?” she asked, at length.
“Upstairs,” Alick answered, stooping over the parcels he had brought in as he spoke.
“Is anything the matter?” Heather asked, quickly turning from the fire. He had only uttered one word, and yet his tone filled her with a vague alarm.
“Is anything the matter?” she repeated, finding he did not reply. “Alick, look at me; why do you keep your face turned away?”
Then Alick looked up, but his eyes fell under Heather’s scrutiny.
“Alick, tell me this instant what is the matter,” she said. In a moment her fancy conjured up all sorts of horrors—her husband was dead, there had been a railway collision, perhaps. Thought is sometimes as quick in our waking moments as in our dreams; and her imagination flew to him over all the miles that intervened between them. “You have heard bad news,” she went on. “Is it about Arthur; is he ill?”
“Not that I know of,” Alick answered. “But, mother, we have had an accident since you went away.”
“An accident!” she repeated. “What kind of an accident—what is it—who is it? Alick, you will drive me mad if you stand there looking at me without speaking.”
He tried to speak, but he could not do it; he had been nerving himself up to tell her, and now, when the moment came for explanation, the words died away upon his lips.
“Heather,” he began, in a tone of deprecating entreaty,—and then suddenly the truth flashed upon her.