“It’s Lally,” she cried; “it’s Lally; oh! my child.”
He caught her as she was about to rush past him out of the room. “Mother, mother,” he said, “listen to me; she fell into the mill-pond, and they brought her home, and the doctor is here, and we have been doing everything.”
“And she is dead!” finished Heather.
“No, she is not,” said Agnes, entering at the moment. “She has this instant opened her eyes;” and she broke out sobbing almost hysterically.
“Thank God!” exclaimed Alick, solemnly, after the manner of a person rescued from some fearful danger.
Then Heather, looking from one to the other, understood that while she had been driving to South Kemms, and making her purchases, and never thinking of evil, her darling had been standing in the very valley of the shadow—that she had brushed garments with the angel of Death; and her first feeling, when she did understand all this, was, not one of gratitude that her child was saved, but of anger and resentment at her ever having been permitted to get into danger.
She had not encountered the ordeal which the younger Dudleys passed through while Lally lay seemingly dead before them; she had not fought for the child as they did, both before and after the doctor’s arrival; she had not endured the agony—an agony not to be described—which filled Alick’s heart when he met the little body being carried home across the fields; she had not ridden for the doctor and followed him from house to house as hard as the best horse in Arthur’s stables could gallop; she had not stood in suspense by the bedside; she had not wondered with them, “How shall we tell Heather—what will Heather say?”
That had been the one thought of every person in and about the house,—“What will Heather do; what will Mrs. Dudley say!”
The very regret for Lally seemed merged in dread of her mother’s sufferings.
How should any one face Heather and tell her Lally’s life was still problematical? Who should prove brave enough to break the tidings to her, and look upon her agony?