“I did not want them. Aunt Griselda would have come, but I would not let them send for her, she would only have troubled me. Erle—Erle Huntingdon I mean—came down, but I did not want to see him; it only made me cry, so he went away, and since then I have been alone.”
“Poor child,” returned Margaret, softly. Yes, she was not too young to suffer; she and Raby had not done full justice to her. The childish face had lost its baby roundness; the beautiful eyes were dim with weeping; the strained white look of endurance that one sees on older faces was on hers: and, with a sudden impulse that she could not control, Margaret stooped and kissed her. “Oh, I am so sorry for you, what you must have suffered,” she said, in a voice that seemed full of tears.
Fay responded to the caress most warmly. “Oh, you are always so kind; one feels you understand without telling. I thought you would be sorry for me. Do you know I did something dreadfully wrong yesterday; they have never let me see him—they have shut me out of my husband’s room—but last evening Saville left the door ajar, and I went in.”
“You went in; oh, Lady Redmond!” and Margaret shuddered as though the sea breezes chilled her.
“Yes, and he did not know me; fancy a husband not knowing his wife. They had cut off his beautiful hair, and be looked so strange, and his eyes were so bright and large, and then, when I kissed him, he pushed me away. Miss Ferrers”—with a quick remembrance of the housekeeper’s words—“you were old friends, at least Hugh said so; do you remember his ever speaking of a little sister who died?”
“Oh, yes,” returned Margaret, quickly; “little Joyce; he was very fond of her as a boy, she was a lovely little creature.”
“Joyce, but her name was Margaret, Mrs. Heron says.”
“To be sure, I remember now, Margaret Joyce; it is engraved so on the tombstone, but they never called her Margaret, it was always Joyce.”
“How strange,” replied Fay, in a puzzled tone; they were standing on a little strip of beach now, and the waves were coming in with a lazy splash and ripple; there was no one in sight, and only a little boat with sails rocking in the distance; how calm and still and peaceful it looked. “Little Joyce,” she repeated, dreamily, while the soft sea breeze fanned the little tendrils of hair from her temples; “but it was dear Margaret for whom he was asking.”
There was a quick gasp strangled before it rose to a sob—for one moment Margaret thought she was in danger of swooning—the sky seemed whirling, the sea was all round her, the sand was nothing but a giddy circle of purple and rose, and blinding yellow; then it passed, there was firm ground under her feet, the mist cleared before her eyes, and Fay was holding her by the arm.