And her attitude
disappointed him. She was singularly indifferent, he thought, and
answered his excited narrative by a fervent wish that they "were safely
back at Hatton." He wondered a little but let the circumstance pass.
"She has been worried about some household misdoing," he thought, and he
tried during their dinner together to lead her back to her usual homely,
frank cheerfulness. He only very partially succeeded, so he lit a cigar
and lay down on the sofa to smoke it. And as his mother knit she lifted
her eyes occasionally and they were full of anxious pity. She knew not
_why_, and yet in her soul there was a dark, swelling sorrow which would
not for any adjuration of Scripture nor any imploration of prayer, be
stilled.
"I wonder what it is," she whispered. "I wonder if Jane----" then there
was a violent knocking at the front door, and she started to her feet,
uttering as she did so the word, "_Now!_" She knew instinctively,
whatever the trouble was, it was standing at her threshold, and she took
a candle in her hand and went to meet it face to face.
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