“I did not mean to listen. I could not help hearing,” replied Geneviève timidly. “Cicely says it would not matter to her if she had lost all,” she said to herself. “She must then be sure he will marry her. And I!—he will be sorry for her now; he will think no more of me.”
And the letters Geneviève wrote that morning were plentifully bedewed with tears.
[CHAPTER III.]
THE NEWS THAT FLIES FAST.
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies,
But in battalions.”
Hamlet.
WHO are the social ravens that at all times and places are ready and eager to perform their self-appointed task as bearers of ill tidings? Like the mysterious “rats of Paris,” ever watching their opportunity, they come to the surface, as if by magic, whenever the tocsin of misfortune sounds; but, unlike that very undesirable community, these evil newsmongers remain in visible, even when hardest at work. We know of their existence but by the unfailing promptitude with which they fulfil their rôle; like will-o’-the-wisp, they are never to be caught.
Some of these mysterious beings were of course on the spot to carry to Lingthurst without delay the news of poor Colonel Methvyn’s death, and full details of its manner and cause. The household was not astir very early on the morning succeeding the ball, but the indefatigable ravens were at work betimes. When Mr. Fawcett’s man knocked at his master’s door with hot water and an armful of clothes, he was in full possession of the “latest particulars,” and not a little delighted to find his master awake, so that he might have the privilege of “breaking” to him the news of the sorrow which had befallen his friends.
“The colonel dead, Green? Impossible! It must be some absurd exaggeration,” exclaimed Trevor, greatly shocked, notwithstanding his expressed incredulity. But Green shook his head mournfully, and said he was afraid it was only too true; and when his master heard all the story that the man was brimming over with eagerness to tell, he too was compelled to admit that there was small probability of exaggeration or incorrectness in the version of the facts which had reached them.
Mr. Fawcett dressed hastily. He gave Green no opportunity of “breaking” to him the special bit of news which, in the opinion of the authorities of the servants’ hall, could not but affect their young gentleman more deeply “than all beside,” the news of the overwhelming loss of fortune, the telegraphic announcement of which, said gossip, speaking for once correctly, had been the immediate cause of Colonel Methvyn’s death. But though he knew nothing of this part of the calamity, Trevor knew enough to send him down stairs with a very small appetite for breakfast, and far from hospitable sentiments towards the large party of guests whom it was his bounden duty to help to entertain.