"Where is Miss Ward?" he asked, quietly. And Althea, who knew he had personal interest in all his pupils, took the question as a matter of course.
"I thought you would have heard," she said, a little sadly. "The poor child is in great trouble." And then she gave him a brief account of the last two days.
Thorold's face paled a little. He was extremely shocked.
"Her twin sister—that beautiful girl I saw in Old Ranelagh gardens?"
"Yes," returned Althea, sorrowfully. "I really think Mollie Ward has the sweetest face I have ever seen. Oh, I do not wonder that Waveney loves her so. She is suffering cruelly, poor child; but her father will not allow her to go home."
"No, of course not," he returned, so quickly that Althea glanced at him. "He is right, quite right. Diphtheria is terribly infectious. She might be ill, too. Good heavens! No one in their sense would expose a girl to such a risk." And Thorold spoke in a low, vehement tone of suppressed feeling; but Althea was too much engrossed with her own painful train of thoughts to notice his unusual emotion.
"No; you are right," she replied. "They must be kept apart. But, Thorold, it makes my heart ache to see her, poor child! It is impossible for any one to comfort her. I can do nothing with her."
Then Thorold's firm lips twitched a little.
"I am sorry," he said, in a quick undertone; "more sorry than I can say. Will you tell her so, please? Good-night. I must go home and work." And then he went off hastily, forgetting that it was his usual custom to help Althea extinguish the lights, and to walk down the dark garden with her; but Althea, sad and pre-occupied, hardly noticed this desertion on Thorold's part.
The evening had seemed a long one to her; her thoughts were in poor Mollie's sick room. Down below a lonely, anxious man sat by his solitary fire. "God comfort him," she said to herself, softly, as she rose from her seat.