CHAPTER XLV.
The clock on the mantelpiece struck six. Zo, turning suddenly from the window, ran to the sofa. “Here’s the carriage!” she cried.
“Teresa!” Carmina exclaimed.
Zo crossed the room, on tiptoe, to the door of the bed-chamber. “It’s mamma,” she said. “Don’t tell! I’m going to hide.”
“Why, dear?”
The answer to this was given mysteriously in a whisper. “She said I wasn’t to come to you. She’s a quick one on her legs—she might catch me on the stairs.” With that explanation, Zo slipped into the bedroom, and held the door ajar.
The minutes passed—and Mrs. Gallilee failed to justify the opinion expressed by her daughter. Not a sound was audible on the stairs. Not a word more was uttered in the room. Benjulia had taken the child’s place at the window. He sat there thinking. Carmina had suggested to him some new ideas, relating to the intricate connection between human faith and human happiness. Slowly, slowly, the clock recorded the lapse of minutes. Carmina’s nervous anxiety began to forecast disaster to the absent nurse. She took Teresa’s telegram from her pocket, and consulted it again. There was no mistake; six o’clock was the time named for the traveller’s arrival—and it was close on ten minutes past the hour. In her ignorance of railway arrangements, she took it for granted that trains were punctual. But her reading had told her that trains were subject to accident. “I suppose delays occur,” she said to Benjulia, “without danger to the passengers?”
Before he could answer—Mrs. Gallilee suddenly entered the room.
She had opened the door so softly, that she took them both by surprise. To Carmina’s excited imagination, she glided into their presence like a ghost. Her look and manner showed serious agitation, desperately suppressed. In certain places, the paint and powder on her face had cracked, and revealed the furrows and wrinkles beneath. Her hard eyes glittered; her laboured breathing was audible.