Hidden from all curious eyes in this dark retreat, Mrs. Netterville yielded at last to the cry of her weak human heart, and, flinging herself face downward on the floor, gave way to a passion of grief which was all the more terrible that it was absolutely tearless. One or two of the few remaining women of the household, knowing how fearfully her soul, in spite of all outward show of calmness, must be wrung, tapped occasionally at the door; but either she did not hear or did not choose to answer, and they dared not enter without permission.
At last one of them went to Hamish, feeling instinctively that, if any one could venture to intrude unbidden, it would be the foster-brother of Nellie, and said:
"The mistress, God help her! is just drowned with the sorrow, and won't even answer when we call. Hamish, a-bouchal, couldn't you manage to go in, just by accident like, and say something or other to give a turn to her thoughts?"
"Give a turn to her thoughts?" said Hamish crustily; "give a turn to her thoughts, do you say? My certie, but you take it easy! Hasn't the woman lost husband and child, to say nothing of the old lord, who was all as one to her as her own father? and isn't she going, moreover, to be turned out of house and home, and sent adrift upon the wide world? and you talk of giving a turn to her thoughts, as if it was the toothache she was troubled with or a wasp that had stung her?"
"As you please, Mr. Hoity-toity," said the girl angrily; "I only thought that, as you were a bit of a pet like, on account of our young mistress, you might have ventured on the liberty. Not having set up in that line myself, I cannot, of course, attempt to meddle in the matter."
But though Hamish had spoken roughly, his heart was very sore, for all that, over the sorrows of his lonely mistress.
He waited until Cathleen had vanished in a huff, and then, going quietly to the study-door, knocked softly for admission.
But Mrs. Netterville gave no sign, and, after knocking two or three times in vain, he opened the door gently and looked in. The room was naturally a gloomy one, being panelled in black oak; but Hamish felt as if it never could have looked before so gloomy as it did that moment. Half study, half oratory as it was, Mrs. Netterville had spent here many a long hour of lonely and impassioned prayer, what time her husband and her father-in-law were fighting the battles of their royal and most ungrateful master. A tall crucifix, carved, like the rest of the furniture, in black oak, stood, therefore, on a sort of prie-dieu at the farther end of the room, and near it was a table arranged in desk-fashion, at which she had been in the habit of transacting the business of her household.
Room and prie-dieu, crucifix and table, Hamish had them all by heart already.
Here in his baby days he had been used to come, when he and his little foster-sister were wearied with their own play, to sit at the feet of Mrs. Netterville and listen to the tales which she invented for their amusement. Here, as time went on, separating Nellie outwardly from his society, yet leaving her as near to him in heart as ever, he had been wont to bring his morning offerings of fish from the running stream, or bunches of purple heather from the rocks. Here he had come for news of the war, and of the master, on that very day which brought tidings of his death; and here, too, even while he tried to comfort Nellie, who had flung herself down in her childish misery just on the spot where her mother lay prostrate now, he had wondered, and, young as he was, had in part, at least, comprehended the marvellous self-forgetfulness of Mrs. Netterville, who, in the midst of her own bereavement, had yet found heart and voice to comfort her aged father-in-law and her child, as if the blow which had struck them down had not fallen with three-fold force on her own head. In the darkness of the room and the confusion of his own thoughts, he did not, however, at first perceive Mrs. Netterville in her lowly posture, and glanced instinctively toward the prie-dieu, where he had so often before seen her take refuge in the hour of trial.