"I don't think my nerves are shattered. I am quite well. There is nothing the matter with me. You forget," she said, with something like a faint laugh, "how often we have said, mamma, how absurd to send and ask after a woman's health when there is nothing the matter with her, when only she has lost——" Here she paused a little, and then said gravely, "Even grief does not affect the health."
"Very often it does not, dear; but, Carry, you must not forget that you have had a terrible shock. Even I, who am not so nearly involved—even I——" Here Lady Lindores, in her excitement and agitation, lost her voice altogether, and sobbed, unable to command herself. "Oh, poor fellow! poor fellow!" she said, with broken tones. "In a moment, Carry, without warning!"
Carry went to her mother's side, and drew her head upon her breast. She was perfectly composed, without a tear. "I have thought of all that," she said; "I cannot think it matters. If God is the Father of us all, we are the same to Him, dead or living. What can it matter to Him that we should make preparations to appear before Him? Oh, all that must be folly, mother. However bad I had been, should I have to prepare to go to you?"
"Carry, Carry, my darling! It is I that should be saying this to you. You are putting too much force upon yourself—it is unnatural; it will be all the more terrible for you after."
Carry stood stooping over her mother, holding Lady Lindores's head against her bosom. She smiled faintly, and shook her head. "Has it not been unnatural altogether?" she said.
To Edith standing behind, this strange scene appeared like a picture—part of the phantasmagoria of which her sister had for years been the centre: her mind leapt back to the discussions which preceded Carry's marriage, the hopeless yielding of the victim, the perplexity and misery of the mother. Now they had changed positions, but the same strange haze of terror and pity, yet almost indignation, was in her own breast. She had been the judge then—in a smaller degree she was the judge now. But this plea stopped her confused and painful thoughts. Has it not been unnatural altogether? Edith's impulse was to escape from a problem which she could not deal with. "I will go and see the children," she said.
"The children—poor children! have you seen them, Carry? do they know?" said Lady Lindores, drying the tears—the only tears that had been shed for Torrance—from her cheeks.
Carry did not make any reply. She went away to the other end of the room and took up a white shawl in which she wrapped herself. "The only thing I feel is cold," she said.
"Ah, my love, that is the commonest feeling. I have felt sometimes as if I could just drag myself to the fire like a wounded animal and care for nothing more."
"But, mother, you were never in any such terrible trouble."