was a slender little thing, very small for her age, with beautiful grey eyes and thick soft hair of a peculiarly pale brown colour. Her face was pale and stained with tears. Louis had hardly seen her since the preceding evening, when he had himself told her of her mother's death.
She crept towards him now, half timidly, and he held out his hand. Zella flung herself on the floor beside him, and leant her head, that ached from crying, against his knee.
"Poor child !" said Louis very gently, and stroked the brown hair. But his gaze was far away over the distant hills.
"Papa—may I—may I "said Zella, half choked.
"May you what, my dear?" Louis's voice was as usual, though Zella spoke in a half-whisper, but there was an underlying note of despairing weariness in his level tones.
"Come with you and see her?" said Zella, with a fresh outburst of tears.
"Why?"
The question startled Zella, and jarred upon her, gently though it had been spoken.
"Because," she sobbed—" because—oh, don't you understand?—to say good-bye to her?"
"She is not there," said Louis very steadily. "Your mother's spirit is not there. All that was her is gone. She would not wish you to see what is left, my poor little child!"
There was a silence. Zella was crying again. Presently he spoke to her softly:
"Zella, try and stop crying, mignonne. You will make yourself ill."
"I can't—I can't—I wish I was dead, too."
Louis spoke no more. Presently a servant came in half hesitatingly, and announced that the clergyman was waiting; and he rose instantly and went into the hall, where Zella heard a subdued murmur of voices. Only one sentence reached her, spoken by her father.
"I wish it to be at once. To-day is Monday—on Thursday afternoon, then."
Zella guessed, with a pang that made her feel physically sick, that they were speaking of her mother's funeral. She fled away through the other door of the study, and gained her own room, where she lay on the bed unable to cry any more, until a pitying maid brought her a cup of tea.
"Try and drink it, Miss Zella dear; it'll do you good," said the maid, sobbing.
"I can't—take it away," moaned Zella, although she was faint from crying and want of food.
"Oh, Miss Zella dear, you must. Whatever will your poor papa do if you're ill! you've got to be a comfort to him now."
Zella sobbed drearily.
"Do try and take just a drop, like a dear. Sophia!" cried the maid in a sort of subdued call, as another servant went past the open door, and cast a pitying look at the little prone figure on the bed.
"Sophia ! whatever can I do with Miss Zella if she won't eat nor drink? I tell her she'll be ill—won't she?—if she goes on crying so."
"And she didn't eat a morsel of breakfast, either," chimed in Sophia.
"Come, Miss Zella, do have a try, like a dear!"
The two servants coaxed and implored the child, the violence of whose sobs had now redoubled, until she at length sat up and choked over a few mouthfuls of the tea, long since grown cold.
"That's a brave young lady," said the kind maids admiringly as they went away, whispering to one another that poor Miss Zella had a terrible amount of feeling, and had been crying all night.
"The master, he hasn't shed a tear yet. Stunned, I believe," said Sophia.
And they descended to the lower regions, to join in the innumerable comments on the awful suddenness of it all, and the " dreadful feeling " produced by a death in the house.
Towards six o'clock the wheels of the carriage were heard, and Louis came out of his wife's room with his set face of resolute composure, and went into the hall to greet his sister-in-law.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans was a tall, good-looking woman, still under forty, and looking even younger than she was. She resembled Esmée de Kervoyou in nothing.
Her face was swollen with tears, and she was in black, with a heavy crepe veil.
"Louis! Louis!" she wrung her brother-in-law's hand: "I can't believe it—our poor, poor darling! . . ." Her voice died away under the crepe veil.
"It was very good of you to come so quickly," said Louis gently. "Have you had tea, Marianne?"
She shook her head and negatived the suggestion by a quick movement.
"Where is poor, poor little Zella?" inquired Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.
"I will send for her: come into the drawing-room."
In the drawing-room a fresh paroxysm of sobbing overtook her, as she raised the heavy veil and looked around her.
"Last time I was here—how different! Oh, her workbox—her piano!" Louis rang the bell.
"It must have been fearfully sudden—your letter gave me no idea; and the shock of the telegram was terrible. You were with her?"
"Yes," said Louis in an expressionless voice. "I will tell you all you want to hear, Marianne; but pray try and —and be brave now. I will send for Zella."
"How is she?" said his sister-in-law, wiping her eyes.
The servant entered.
"Will you bring tea, and tell Miss Zella that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans has arrived?"
"How is the poor child?" again inquired her aunt.
"She is very much overwrought," said Louis calmly, "and has cried herself almost ill. I shall be very grateful, Marianne, if you will help her through the next two or three days, and induce her to eat and sleep properly, and try to check her tears. Her mother would not wish her to cry so, and make herself ill."
"It is far more natural that she should cry, and will be better for her in the end," said Marianne Lloyd-Evans almost resentfully. "And how can she not cry, unless she were utterly heartless and callous—her own mother, and, oh, what a devoted one!" Louis remembered the number of times that Marianne had accused Esmée of spoiling her only child, and said nothing.
When Zella entered, her aunt sprang up with a cry of pity, and clasped the little forlorn figure in her arms.
Zella's tears began afresh at the tenderness, and they wept together. Louis de Kervoyou gazed again out of the window, where darkness was falling over the garden, and presently left the room.
He did not again see his sister-in-law until they met at dinner.
At the sight of Esmée's empty chair she started a little and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. They spoke very little while the servants were in the room. The strange awe that fills a house visited by death hung heavy in the silence.
Once Louis asked, "Has Zella gone to bed?" and her aunt said, "Yes, she is worn out. I gave her a little something that will put her to sleep."
