Part 8 (2/2)

Enderby exclaimed in a low voice:

”The child! I had quite forgotten her!”

”Yes, there will be trouble here,” muttered Mr. Enderby; while Hetty came forward, her face pale and stained with crying, her dress disordered, and her curly hair wild and disarranged. She looked so altered that they scarcely knew her.

”How is she? Oh, Mrs. Enderby, say she is better,” cried Hetty, swallowing a sob.

”My dear child,” said Mrs. Enderby, ”how have you come to be forgotten here, have you not been in bed all night?”

”I stayed here,” said Hetty, ”I wanted to know; will you not tell me how she is?”

”My child, she is well, I hope, though not as you would wish to see her.

It has pleased G.o.d to take her away from you.”

”Do you mean that she is dead?”

”Yes, my poor Hetty, I am grieved to tell you it is so.”

Hetty uttered a sharp cry and turned her back on her friends standing in the window. The gesture was an unmistakable one, and touched the husband and wife. It seemed to say so plainly that she expected nothing from them.

She retreated into the furthest corner of the room and flung herself on the floor, and Scamp, hanging his head and wagging his tail, followed her mournfully, and lay down as close to her as he could.

”Leave her alone awhile,” said Mr. Enderby, for his wife had made a movement as if she would follow her; ”she is a strange child, and we will give her time to take in the fact of her loss. You must not be hurried into making rash promises through pity; all this brings a great change to the girl, and it is better she should feel it from the first.”

The truth was Mrs. Rushton had been dead when her brother and sister-in-law arrived. A sudden attack of fainting had resulted in death. This abrupt termination of her illness was not quite unexpected by herself or her friends, as it was known she had disease of the heart, and the doctors had given warning that such might be her end. However, she herself had not liked to look this probability in the face, and had preferred to dwell on the faint hope held out to her that she might linger on as an invalid for many a year.

CHAPTER IX.

WHAT TO DO WITH HER?

After Mrs. Rushton had been laid to rest in her grave her worldly affairs had to be looked into. She had died possessed of a great deal of property, and her relations were well aware that she had never made a will. Her brother had lately urged her to make a will, but she had always put off the unpleasant task. Now there was nothing to be done but to divide the property among the relatives to whom it reverted by law.

After the funeral her late husband's relations and Mr. Enderby met at Amber Hill and discussed these matters of business.

In the meantime Hetty had been left at Amber Hill in the care of the housekeeper, for Mr. Enderby would not allow his wife to carry her off to Wavertree.

”It would be a mistake,” he said, ”to begin what we may not think proper to go on with afterwards. If the child comes home with us now she may feel herself aggrieved, later, at being sent away. To act with prudence is our first duty towards her.”

So Hetty had been left with the housekeeper, who, being a kind woman in her way, tried to comfort her with cakes and jam. Her only real comfort was her darling Scamp, and with her arms round his s.h.a.ggy neck she shed many a tear of loneliness and terror. Her heart was full of anxious fears as to what was going to become of her.

She had stolen into the room where the dead woman lay to take her last farewell of her benefactress. n.o.body watched there, and Hetty easily found an opportunity for paying her tearful visit. Scamp, who never left her side, accompanied her with a sad solemnity in his countenance, and these were perhaps the two most real mourners whom the wealthy lady had left behind her.

Now all was over, and Mrs. Rushton's room looked vacant and with as little sign of her presence as if she had never inhabited it. The wintry suns.h.i.+ne smiled in at all the windows of her handsome house, and made it cheerful even though the blinds were drawn down. The robins twittered in the evergreens outside, and the maids had their little jokes as usual over their sewing, though they spoke in lowered tones. No great and terrible change seemed to have happened to any one but Hetty, except indeed to Scamp, and it was plain that he suffered only for Hetty's sake.

On the day when Mrs. Rushton's relations met at Amber Hill Hetty sat in the housekeeper's room in a little straw chair at the fire, with Scamp clasped in her arms and her head resting against his. She felt instinctively that her fate was being sealed upstairs. Indeed a few words which had pa.s.sed between Grant and the housekeeper, and which she had accidentally overheard, a.s.sured her that such would be the case.

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