“Miss North, you mustn’t scream. For Heaven’s sake, think of his wife! Remember what those two are—have been—to one another, and remember—everything. Let us get her safe to the fort, and let Mrs Hardy break it to her gently. A sudden shock like this might kill her.”
Mabel freed herself from the restraining hand, and stood shivering as if with cold. “Oh, Dick, Dick!” she wailed pitifully, in a tone that went to the men’s hearts, and then she crept back in silence along the passage. Once in her own room, she dropped helplessly into a chair and sat rigid, staring straight before her. Dick dead! Georgia a widow! that perfect comradeship at an end for ever!—and Georgia did not know it. Mabel wrung her hands feebly. It was the only movement she had strength to make. All power of thought and action seemed to have forsaken her. Dick was dead and Georgia was left.
“My beloved Mab!” Georgia came hurrying in, equipped for driving. “I said I should be ready first, but I didn’t expect to find you quite so far behind. I believe Rahah keeps half my things packed, all ready for a night alarm of this kind, but of course your ayah is not accustomed to these little excitements. Are you quite overwhelmed by the amount that has to be done?”
“Yes; I don’t know what to pack first,” said Mabel, with a forced laugh, keeping her face turned away.
“Well, Rahah and I will see to that while you dress. We may be some days in the fort, and you don’t want to go about in an amber dressing-gown the whole time. We’ll begin with your jewel-case. Where is it?”
“Oh, I don’t know! What’s the good of taking that sort of thing?”
“It might be invaluable—to buy food, or bribe the enemy, or ransom a prisoner—or anything. Where is it, Mab? I thought you kept it in here?”
“Yes, I do.” Mabel looked up from the shoe she was tying, as Georgia ransacked a drawer in vain. “But no doubt Tara has taken it out to the cart already. She has always been instructed to save it first of all if the house was on fire.”
Mabel spoke wearily. The awful irony of Georgia’s fussing over a box of trinkets while Dick lay dead almost destroyed her self-control. How was it that she did not guess the truth without being told?
“But why hasn’t she come back to help you to dress? I hope it’s all right, Mab, but I doubt if you’ll see that jewel-case again. She has had time to slip away with it and hide somewhere. Here, Rahah, put all these things in the box. It’s well to take plenty of clothes, Mab, for we are not likely to be able to get much washing done.”