“I have brought it to you, Mossgray.”
She spoke very slowly as if deliberate pain were necessary to produce each single word. She had brought it—the messenger of death.
And laying it on the table before him, Lilias sat down on Charlie’s chair, and leaning her heavy head upon her hand, lifted her eyes to the old man’s face as he read the letter.
Such a letter he had once received—but this was written by a friend of the dead, and written with tears as it had been read, though the tears were very different. The writer said his dear friend Grant, travelling for his health to some place among the mountains where health was to be found, had joined a British Company, a few officers and a small band of men, on the way; that one of the revolted Affghan tribes had encountered them, and after a desperate and unavailing struggle, the small, brave force had been utterly cut to pieces, and it was impossible even to recover the bodies of the slain. Mossgray shuddered as he came to this conclusion of the kind, well-meaning letter, and felt what torture it must have inflicted; yet it was gently done, and in few words, as is the kindest, when such tidings are to be told.
She was looking at him; with the deep, blue, wakeful eyes which cast wan light like the moon over her colourless face, she was reading his countenance.
“My poor Lilias!” said the kind Mossgray—he could say nothing more.
And then, in her slow, painful way, she began to speak. It was so great a grief to hear every distinct convulsive word as she uttered it, that the old man could hardly gather their import while he listened. She did not look at him now; her eyes were wandering through the vacant room, opened widely, as though she dared not cast down their lids, and the slow tide of her speech—those single words which came from her lips, like so many life-drops from a heart, pained to the utmost the gentle soul of Adam Graeme. She wanted to tell him that now she was alone—that she had only one wish now, separate from Mossgray, and that was to see his mother.
“My poor child,” said the old man, as Lilias came to this point, and laboured with her convulsed utterance to articulate the words: “We will speak of this another time when we can speak of it; but now you must rest.”
And when he spoke of rest she laid down her head upon her hands, and her agony returned upon her.
“Lilias,” said the old man, “what if he had changed?—what if you had learned that he was not what you believed him to be? Rather thank God that bravely in honour and faith, he has been taken home; in the odour and grace of youth, before evil days or stains came upon him. Lilias, there are sorrows harder than yours—you shall find again him whom you have lost. There are those who have lost, and shall find never more, because they are parted not by this faithful and pure death, but by the dark barriers of sin and change. Lilias, my good child!”