“Mother, are you sure? is it quite as bad as that?” asked Nan; and then she kissed away the tears, and said something rather brokenly about having faith, and trying not to lose courage; then her voice failed her, and they all sat quiet together.
CHAPTER VII.
PHILLIS’S CATECHISM.
A veil of silence fell over the little party. After the first few moments of dismay, conjecture, and exclamation, there did not seem to be much that any one could say. Each girl was busy with her own thoughts and private interpretation of a most sorrowful enigma. What were they to do? How were they to live without separation, and without taking a solitary plunge into an unknown and most terrifying world?
Nan’s frame of mind was slightly monotonous. What would Dick say, and how would this affect certain vague hopes she had lately cherished? Then she thought of Mr. Mayne, and shivered, and a sense of coldness and remote fear stole over her.
One could hardly blame her for this sweet dual selfishness, that was not selfishness. She was thinking less of herself than of a certain vigorous young life that was becoming strongly entwined with hers. It was all very well to say that Dick was Dick; but what could the most obstinate will of even that most obstinate young man avail against such a miserable combination of adverse influences,—“when the stars in their courses fought against Sisera”? And at this juncture of her thoughts she could feel Phillis’s hand folding softly over hers with a most sisterly pressure of full understanding and sympathy. Phillis had no Dick to stand sentinel over her private thoughts; she was free to be alert and vigilant for others. Nevertheless, her forehead was puckered up with hard thinking, and her silence was so very expressive that Dulce sat and looked at her with grave unsmiling eyes, the innocent child-look in them growing very pathetic at the speechlessness that had overtaken them. As for Mrs. Challoner, she still moaned feebly from time to time, as she stretched her numb hands towards the comforting warmth. They were fine delicate hands, with the polished look of old ivory, and there were diamond rings on them that twinkled and shone as she moved them in her restlessness.
“They shall all go; I will keep nothing,” she said, regarding 49 them plaintively; for they were heirlooms, and highly valued as relics of a wealthy past. “It is not this sort of thing that I mind. I would live on a crust thankfully, if I could only keep my children with me.” And she looked round at the blooming faces of her girls with eyes brimming over with maternal fondness.
Poor Dulce’s lips quivered, and she made a horrified gesture.