"O Mr. Brock!" she exclaimed; "you back! But none too well yet, judging by appearances."
"Where is Mrs. Maclure?" he demanded.
"I wish I knew!" Ethel Maud Mary rejoined, becoming important all at once. "She's gone for good, that's all I can tell you. O Mr. Brock! fancy her being tip-top all the time, and us not suspecting it, though I might have thought something when I saw the dresses she sold when you were ill, only I'd got the fashion papers in my mind, and didn't know but what she'd been paid in dresses! Come into the parlour; you look faint."
"You said she sold her dresses?"
"Yes; sit down, Mr. Brock. A glass of port wine is what you want, as she'd say herself if she was here; and you'll get it good too, for it's been sent for Ma. My! the things that have come! Look at me—all presents—everything she ever heard me say I'd like to have; and Gwendolen the same."
She got out the wine and the biscuits from a chiffonier as she chattered, and set them before him.
"Yes, she sold her dresses, and her rings, and her books, and every other blessed thing she possessed except what had belonged to an old aunt. She got them out too, one day, but cried so when it came to parting with them, I persuaded her to wait. I said something would turn up, I was sure. And something did, for you went away, and directly after—the next minute, so to speak, for you were scarcely out of sight—a lady stopped her carriage—a fine carriage and pair and coachman and footman all silver-mounted—and ran up the steps in a great way. She'd seen Mrs. Maclure go into the house, and she said she'd been hunting for her everywhere for months, and all her friends were in a way about her, not knowing what had happened to her. I took the lady up to the attic, and there was Mrs. Maclure lying on the floor looking like death, with her head up against the big chair where you used to sit. We thought she was dead at first, but the doctor came and brought her round. He said it was just exhaustion from fatigue and starvation."
Arthur Brock uttered an exclamation.
"You needn't reproach yourself, Mr. Brock," Ethel Maud Mary pursued sympathetically. "You weren't worse than the rest of us. I saw her every day, and never suspected she was denying herself everything, she was always so much the same—happy, you know, in her quiet way."
"Do you think she was happy?" he groaned.