Part 26 (2/2)

Ethel burst into tears, and caught her mother's robe as she was turning away. ”Mamma, do not be angry with me! I trust I am not selfish.

Mamma”--and her voice sank to a whisper--”I have been thinking that it may be the fever.”

The fever! For one moment Lady Sarah paused in consternation, but the next she decided there was no fear of it. She really believed so.

”The fever!” she reproachfully said. ”Heaven help you for a selfish and a fanciful child, Ethel! Did I not send you to bed with headache last night, and what is it but the remains of that headache that you feel this morning? I can see what it is; you have been fretting after this departure of Thomas G.o.dolphin! Get up and dress yourself, and come in and attend upon your sister. You know she can't bear to be waited on by any one but you. Get up, I say, Ethel.”

Will Lady Sarah Grame remember that little episode until death shall take her? I should, in her place. She suppressed all mention of it to Thomas G.o.dolphin. ”The dear child told me she did not feel well, but I only thought she had a headache, and that she would perhaps feel better up,” were the words in which she related it to him. What sort of a vulture was gnawing at her heart as she spoke them? It was true that, in her blind selfishness for that one undeserving child, she had lost sight of the fact that illness could come to Ethel; she had not allowed herself to entertain its probability; she, who had accused of selfishness that devoted, generous girl, who was ready at all hours to sacrifice herself to her sister; who would have sacrificed her very life to save Sarah Anne's.

Ethel got up. Got up as she best could; her limbs aching, her head burning. She went into Sarah Anne's room, and did for her what she was able, gently, lovingly, anxiously, as of yore. Ah, child! let those, who are left, be thankful that it was so: it is well to be stricken down in the path of duty, working until we can work no more.

_She_ did so. She stayed where she was until the day was half gone; bearing up, it was hard to say how. She could not touch breakfast; she could not take anything. None saw how ill she was. Lady Sarah was wilfully blind; Sarah Anne had eyes and thoughts for herself alone.

”What are you s.h.i.+vering for?” Sarah Anne once fretfully asked her. ”I feel cold, dear,” was Ethel's unselfish answer: not a word said she further of her illness. In the early part of the afternoon, Lady Sarah was away from the room for some time upon domestic affairs; and when she returned to it Mr. Snow was with her. He had been prevented from calling earlier in the day. They found that Sarah Anne had dropped into a doze, and Ethel was stretched on the floor before the fire, moaning. But the moans ceased as they entered.

Mr. Snow, regardless of waking the invalid, strode up to Ethel, and turned her face to the light. ”How long has she been like this?” he cried out, his voice shrill with emotion. ”Child! child! why did they not send for me?”

Alas! poor Ethel was, even then, growing too ill to reply. Mr. Snow carried her to her room with his own arms, and the servants undressed her and laid her in the bed from which she was never more to rise. The fever attacked her violently: but not more so than it had attacked Sarah Anne; scarcely as badly; and danger, for Ethel, was not imagined. Had Sarah Anne not got over a similar crisis, they would have feared for Ethel: so are we given to judge by collateral circ.u.mstances. It was only on the third or fourth day that highly dangerous symptoms declared themselves, and then Lady Sarah wrote to Thomas G.o.dolphin the letter which had not reached him. There was this much of negative consolation to be derived from its miscarriage: that, had it been delivered to him on the instant of its arrival, he could not have been in time to see her.

”You ought to have written to me as soon as she was taken ill,” he observed to Lady Sarah.

”I would have done so had I apprehended danger,” she repentantly answered. ”But I never did apprehend it. Mr. Snow did not do so. I thought how pleasant it would be to get her safe through the danger and the illness, before you should know of it.”

”Did she not wish me to be written to?”

The question was put firmly, abruptly, after the manner of one who will not be cheated of his answer. Lady Sarah dared not evade it. How could she equivocate, with her child lying dead in the house.

”It is true. She did wish it. It was on the first day of her illness that she spoke. 'Write, and tell Thomas G.o.dolphin.' She never said it but that once.”

”And you did not do so?” he returned, his voice hoa.r.s.e with pain.

”Do not reproach me! do not reproach me!” cried Lady Sarah, clasping her hands in supplication, while the tears fell in showers from her eyes. ”I did it for the best. I never supposed there was danger: I thought what a pity it was to bring you back, all that long journey: putting you to so much unnecessary trouble and expense.”

Trouble and expense, in such a case! She could speak of expense to Thomas G.o.dolphin! But he remembered how she had had to battle both with expense and trouble her whole life long; that for her these must wear a formidable aspect: and he remained silent.

”I wish now I had written,” she resumed, in the midst of her choking sobs. ”As soon as Mr. Snow said there was danger, I wished it. But”--as if she would seek to excuse herself--”what with the two upon my hands, she upstairs, Sarah Anne here, I had not a moment for proper reflection.”

”Did you tell her you had not written?” he asked. ”Or did you let her lie waiting for me, hour after hour, day after day, blaming me for my careless neglect?”

”She never blamed any one; you know she did not,” wailed Lady Sarah: ”and I believe she was too ill to think even of you. She was only sensible at times. Oh, I say, do not reproach me, Mr. G.o.dolphin! I would give my own life to bring her back again! I never knew her worth until she was gone. I never loved her as I love her now.”

There could be no doubt that Lady Sarah Grame was reproaching herself far more bitterly than any reproach could tell upon her from Thomas G.o.dolphin. An accusing conscience is the worst of all evils. She sat there, her head bent, swaying herself backwards and forwards on her chair, moaning and crying. It was not a time, as Thomas G.o.dolphin felt, to say a word of her past heartless conduct, in forcing Ethel to breathe the infection of Sarah Anne's sick-room. And, all that he could say, all the reproaches, all the remorse and repentance, would not bring Ethel back to life.

”Would you like to see her?” whispered Lady Sarah, as he rose to leave.

”Yes.”

She lighted a candle, and preceded him upstairs. Ethel had died in her own room. At the door, Thomas G.o.dolphin took the candle from Lady Sarah.

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