“I have sent a telegram to your uncle, and he will meet you, and go on to Boston with you to-night,” her aunt said.
Melicent offered her a cup of coffee, and she put it to her lips, and tried to drink it; but all the muscles of her mouth and throat seemed to be fixed, and she could not swallow a drop. She gave back the cup, without uttering a word.
“I have put some fruit and a small bottle of sherry into this luncheon-bag for you,” Mrs. Yorke said hastily. “You must try to take a little on the way. You do not want to lose your strength, and these will be refreshing.”
No one mentioned Dick Rowan’s name to Edith, or offered a word of comfort. They even refrained from expressing too much solicitude and affection, and only kissed her silently when she went out. “Do nothing but what is necessary,” Mrs. Yorke had said to her daughters. “There is no greater torture, at such a time, than to be fretted about trifles. Think of her feelings, not of expressing your own.”
Neither Betsey nor her assistants were allowed to appear, and Patrick had orders to speak only when he was spoken to, and not on any account to mention Mr. Rowan’s name.
“If he dies, it will kill Edith,” Mrs. Yorke said, letting her tears flow when her niece was out of sight.
Some such thought was in Edith’s own mind during that long drive. If Dick Rowan should die, her peace and joy would die with him; not that he was everything to her, but because she could never accept a happiness which was only to be reached over his grave. Edith loved Carl Yorke with all her heart, he attracted her irresistibly, and seemed rather a part of herself than a separate being; yet at that moment the thought of his death would have been to her more tolerable than the thought of Dick Rowan’s.
Mrs. Yorke’s telegram was at the priest’s house awaiting her husband when he arrived, and he went at once to the hotel where his niece was to meet him. Soon they were on the way.
“The Catholics here are in a state of the wildest excitement,” he said. “The news arrived before we did, and the Irish want to go down and burn Seaton to the ground. Father Rasle will have difficulty in quieting them. The better class of Protestants, even, cry out against the outrage. They have called an indignation meeting for to-night, and the Protestant gentlemen are contributing to buy the priest a watch. His watch and pocket-book were stolen Saturday night, you know.”
Though Edith said but little in reply, it was not because she had more important matter in her mind. The number of seats in the car she counted over with weary persistence, the number of narrow boards in the side of the car she learned by heart. She knew just how the lamp swung, and could have described accurately afterward the face and costume of the boy who sold papers and lemonade and pop-corn. Not till the weary night was over, and her uncle said, “Here we are in Boston!” did she awaken from that nightmare entanglement of littlenesses. Then first she showed some agitation.