“Is Mrs. Brady within?” inquired the visitor.
“She is,” was the reply, uttered in an accent and with a manner as uncompromising as a north wind.
“Can I see her?”
“It is not likely you can. Maybe you are a stranger, and have not heard what has happened.”
“It is because I have heard,” Grace answered, “that I am here. Be so good as to tell Mrs. Brady—”
“Who is it, Susan?” called out a weak, querulous voice at this juncture. “No matter who it is, tell them I am in trouble and can see no one—remember that—no one!”
“Not even Grace,” answered her old friend. “Oh, Nettie! I have travelled all the way from England to be with you. Let me come in and speak to you: let me stay—”
Before she had finished her sentence Mrs. Brady had crossed the hall and flung the door wide open.
“Grace! Grace!” she cried.
That was all. In a wordless agony she clung about the new-comer. She twined her arms around her, she laid her head on her shoulder, but she never cried nor sobbed. The years fraught with agony inconceivable, seemed to have taken the power of weeping from her.