CHAPTER LII.
Quand on a trouvé ce qu'on cherchait, on n'a pas le temps de le dire: il faut mourir.—J. Joubert.
When the gray of the early morning had changed to golden sunlight, and the first faint twittering of the birds gave place to fuller melody, Mrs. Middleton went softly to the window, opened it and fastened it back. She drew a long breath of the warm air fresh from the beanfields, and, looking down into the little orchard below, saw Harry Hardwicke, who stepped forward and looked up at her. She signed to him to wait, and a couple of minutes later she joined him.
"How is she? How has she passed the night?" he asked eagerly.
"She is no worse. She has lived through it bravely, with one thought. You were very right to send for Percival."
Hardwicke looked down and colored as he had colored when he spoke of him before. "I'm glad," he said. "I'm off to fetch him in about an hour and a half."
"Nothing from Godfrey Hammond?" she asked after a pause.
"No. I'll ask at my father's as I go by. He will either come or we shall hear, unless he is out."
"Of course," the old lady answered. "Godfrey Hammond would not fail me. And now good-bye, Harry, till you bring Percival."
She went away as swiftly and lightly as she had come a minute before, and left Hardwicke standing on the turf under the apple trees gazing up at the open casement. A June morning, sun shining, soft winds blowing, a young lover under his lady's window: it should have been a perfect poem. And the lady within lay crushed and maimed, dying in the very heart of her June!