Such days make the blood course tumultuously through the veins of youth, when with the birds and all the live young things that sport in the sunshine, they feel that mere existence is a joy and a source of endless gratitude.
“Who so happy as I?” thought Nea, as she tripped through the great empty rooms of Belgrave House, with her hands full of golden primroses; “how delicious it is only to be alive on such a morning.”
Alas for that happy spring-tide, for the joyousness and glory of her youth. Little did Nea guess as she flitted, like a white butterfly, from one flower vase to another, that her spring-tide was already over, and that the cloud that was to obscure her life was dawning slowly in the east.
CHAPTER VIII.
MAURICE TRAFFORD.
I have no reason than a woman’s reason;
I think him so, because I think him so.
Shakespeare.
Before noon there was terror and confusion in Belgrave House. Nea, flitting like a humming-bird from flower to flower, was suddenly startled by the sound of heavy jolting footsteps on the stairs, and, coming out on the corridor, she saw strange men carrying the insensible figure of her father to his room. She uttered a shrill cry and sprung toward them, but a gentleman who was following them put her gently aside, and telling her that he was a doctor, and that he would come to her presently, quietly closed the door.
Nea, sitting on the stairs and weeping passionately, heard from a sympathizing bystander the little there was to tell.
Mr. Huntingdon had met with an accident in one of the crowded city lanes. His horse had shied at some passing object and had thrown him—here Nea uttered a low cry—but that was not all.