Then she buried her face in the pillow, and her whole figure shook convulsively. Mrs. Moore looked at Mr. Guildford in despair. Suddenly an idea struck her.
“Miss Cicely, my dear,” she said, “I am very sorry to disturb you, but I think you are forgetting that Mr. Guildford must be very tired. He came from Sothernbay in a hurry, you know, and has been up all night and has had nothing to eat. And it is nearly morning now.”
A faint streak of dawn was creeping in at the window—the cold ghastly dawn of a rainy February morning. Cicely sat up, but shivered as she saw it. This time yesterday she had been glad to see the daylight, for the night had been long and trying, and Charlie had wished many times “morning would come.” Oh! how dreadful these trifling associations sometimes are. “This time yesterday” our darling was still here; “this day last week,” bright and full of life perhaps; “this time last year,”—ah! what bitter changes since then;—to the young, the first tear-stained entries in life’s calendar seem to dim all the leaves of the book, even the white blank sheets of the future; to the old, the gentle, merciful haze of distance mellows and softens the darkness of even the darkest pages.
But Cicely was young, not old, and today the sight of the cold, careless daylight returning again, “as if nothing were the matter,” was strange and repulsive. She shivered, and for a moment covered her face with her hands. But the old servant had touched the right chord. When Miss Methvyn spoke again, it was in quite a different tone.
“I have been very selfish,” she said with a sort of simple dignity, “very selfish and thoughtless. Mr. Guildford, you must for give me.”
Then she stood up and was moving away, when a thought struck her, and she turned back.
“I have not thanked you,” she said, looking up at Mr. Guildford and holding out her hand. “Good-bye, and thank you very much. It will always be a comfort to us that you came so quickly, otherwise we might have thought that something else might have been done.”
Her lips quivered again, in spite of her effort to be calm. She turned quickly, and stooping over the bedside, once more kissed the little face and then hurried away.
An hour later, when the grey dreary dawn was growing into dull daylight, Mr. Guildford was driven away again—to Greybridge Station this time. The same young groom drove as on the night before, but he was very silent this morning, and his eyes looked as if he had been crying all night.
“Little Master” had left some sore hearts behind him.