CHAPTER I.
“Gabrielle, you should not stay out so late alone.”
“It isn’t late, sister dear, for a summer’s evening. The church clock struck eight just as I turned into the little path across the field.”
The first speaker, who was the eldest, raised her head from her work, and, looking at Gabrielle, said:
“For you it is too late. You are not well, Gabrielle. You are quite flushed and tired. Where have you been?”
“Nowhere but in the village,” Gabrielle said.
She paused a moment, then added, rather hurriedly:
“I was detained by a poor sick woman I went to see. You don’t know her, Joanna, she has just come here.”
“And who is she?” Joanna asked.
“She is a widow woman, not young, and very poor. She spoke to me in the road the other day, and I have seen her once or twice since. She had heard our name in the village, and to-night I promised her that you or Bertha would go and call on her. She has been very unhappy, poor thing. You will go, sister?”