"Isn't mamma down yet?" said Bell.
"Bell," said Lily, "something has happened. Mamma has got a letter."
"Happened! What has happened? Is anybody ill? Who is the letter from?" And Bell was going to return through the door in search of her mother.
"Stop, Bell," said Lily. "Do not go to her yet. I think it's from—Adolphus."
"Oh, Lily, what do you mean?"
"I don't know, dear. We'll wait a little longer. Don't look like that, Bell." And Lily strove to appear calm, and strove almost successfully.
"You have frightened me so," said Bell.
"I am frightened myself. He only sent me one line yesterday, and now he has sent nothing. If some misfortune should have happened to him! Mrs. Crump brought down the letter herself to mamma, and that is so odd, you know."
"Are you sure it was from him?"
"No; I have not spoken to her. I will go up to her now. Don't you come, Bell. Oh! Bell, do not look so unhappy." She then went over and kissed her sister, and after that, with very gentle steps, made her way up to her mother's room. "Mamma, may I come in?" she said.
"Oh! my child!"
"I know it is from him, mamma. Tell me all at once."
Mrs. Dale had read the letter. With quick, glancing eyes, she had made herself mistress of its whole contents, and was already aware of the nature and extent of the sorrow which had come upon them. It was a sorrow that admitted of no hope. The man who had written that letter could never return again; nor if he should return could he be welcomed back to them. The blow had fallen, and it was to be borne. Inside the letter to herself had been a very small note addressed to Lily. "Give her the enclosed," Crosbie had said in his letter, "if you do not now think it wrong to do so. I have left it open, that you may read it." Mrs. Dale, however, had not yet read it, and she now concealed it beneath her handkerchief.
I will not repeat at length Crosbie's letter to Mrs. Dale. It covered four sides of letter-paper, and was such a letter that any man who wrote it must have felt himself to be a rascal. We saw that he
