years older than when he had seen her fifteen months before. She had a worn look, although the flush of pleasure and surprise which his coming had called up in her cheek made her quite pretty for the moment.
"Oh, Dr. Ashleigh," she said, "how kind of you to come and see me! how very kind! I suppose you had heard of my confinement. Is it not a fine little fellow?" and she uncovered the baby's face, that the doctor might see it. "Robert did not tell me that he had written to you. I suppose he wanted to surprise me. I am so sorry he is away: he is not often away, Dr. Ashleigh—very, very seldom—and then always on business. He is very kind to me."
The doctor was greatly touched, accustomed as he was, and as all medical men must be, to scenes of pain and grief; yet there was something very touching in her pleading now for her husband, for whose sake she had gone through so much, and who was now lying dead, although she knew it not. He could hardly command his voice to speak steadily, as he answered,—
"I am very glad to see you again, Sophy, and I came up specially to do so; but I did not know till I came to the door that you were confined, or were even expecting it; but I am very glad, for your sake, that it is so, and that you have got over it so well."
Dr. Ashleigh spoke very kindly, but Sophy at once detected a certain gravity in his manner.
"Is anything the matter?" she asked at once.
Dr. Ashleigh hardly knew what answer to make, and hesitated for a moment whether it would not be better to defer the communication of the fatal intelligence for a few days; but the thought of the anxiety Sophy would suffer from Robert's continued and unexplained silence, decided him; for he thought she would probably pine and fret so much, that in a short time she would be in a state even less fitted to stand the blow than she was at present.
"My dear Sophy," he said, sitting down upon the bed, and taking her hand in his, "since I last saw you, things have greatly changed with us all. With you I need not say how much—with us also greatly."
"I am so sorry——" Sophy began, as if about to lament the share she had had in all this.
"My dear Sophy, we do not blame you. That was all over long ago; nor could you, at any rate, have possibly foreseen that my children could have been injured by anything you might have done to displease Mr. Harmer. Humanly speaking, the contrary effect might have been anticipated. I only say that great changes have taken place. Your little friend Polly has grown into a very dear, lovable, clever woman; while Agnes has suffered very much. Her engagement with Mr. Desborough has been broken off, and she has been very ill. However, by God's mercy, she has been spared to us, but she is still in a sadly weak state."
"But there is something else, doctor—is there not?—some new misfortune? It cannot be about Robert?" she said, anxiously; "you could not have heard anything of him?"
Dr. Ashleigh was silent.
"It is, then! Oh, tell me what it is!"
"My dear Sophy, you have judged rightly. I do come to tell you about Robert, but you must be calm and collected. Remember that any excitement on your part now would be most injurious to your child—remember that any illness on your part means death on his."
Sophy, with a great effort, controlled herself, and sat very quiet. The colour had faded from her cheeks now, and the marks of care seemed to come back again very plain and deep; then, after waiting a minute or two, until she felt herself quite quiet, she laid one hand on the cheek of her sleeping baby, and looked up appealingly into Dr. Ashleigh's face.
"My dear Sophy, your husband has met with an accident, and is seriously injured."
Sophy's cheeks were as white, now, as the dress she wore; she spoke not, although her lips were parted, but her eyes—at all times large, and now looking unnaturally so from the thinness of her cheeks—begged for more news.
"I'm afraid he is very ill," the doctor said.
"I must go to him!" she panted out; "I must go to him!" and she made an effort to rise.
"You cannot," Dr. Ashleigh said; "you cannot; it would kill you. Bear it bravely, Sophy; keep quiet, my child, for your own sake and your baby's."
Again Sophy's hand went back to the infant's face, from which in her effort to rise she had for a moment withdrawn it, and rested on the soft unconscious cheek, but she never took her eyes from the doctor's face. At last she said, in a strange far-off sort of voice,—
"Tell me the worst—Is he dead?"
She read the answer in his face, and gave a low short cry; and then was silent, but her eyes no longer looked at him, but gazed with a blank horror into the distance, as if they sought to penetrate all obstacles, and to seek her dead husband.
"Comfort yourself, my poor child," Dr. Ashleigh said tenderly; "God has stricken you grievously, but he has given you your child to love."
Sophy made no answer; she neither heard nor saw him, but sat rigid and stiff, the picture of mute despair. Two or three times the doctor spoke to her, but nothing betokened that she heard him. He raised her hand, which was laying motionless in his; he let it go, and it fell lifelessly on the bed again. He began to be seriously alarmed—he feared that she would awaken from this state with a succession of wild shrieks, and then a series of fainting fits, the termination of which in her condition would probably be death. In the hopes of acting upon her newborn feelings of maternity, he took the child up, and placed it against her, but the arms made no movement to enclose or support it; she showed no sign of consciousness of what he was doing. Then he slightly pinched the child's arm, and it woke with a loud wailing cry. In an instant a change passed over the rigid face; a human light came into the stony fixed eyes; and with a little cry, and a quick convulsive movement, she clasped the child to her breast, leaned over it, and her tears rained down freely now, as she swayed herself to and fro, and hushed it to her bosom.
Dr. Ashleigh knew that the worst was over now, and for a time he let her grief have its way undisturbed; he then persuaded her to lie down, and, enfeebled as she was by her recent illness, in less than an hour she cried herself to sleep.
The doctor sat by her side until she awoke, which was not for some time, and when she did so she was calmer and more composed. He then talked to her very soothingly, but did not enter into any of the details of her husband's death, beyond the fact that it was the result of an accident, and that he had died at Rochester, and would be buried there; that he had sent for him, and that he had been with him to the end, and that her name had been the last word on his lips. The doctor told her he would return again in a few days to see her, and that she must not disquiet herself about the future, for that he would take care of her and her child as if they were his own.
Sophy answered dreamily, although gratefully, to all he said, but she was at present too much stunned by the blow to be capable of fixing her attention; indeed, she scarce understood his words. While Sophy was asleep, Dr. Ashleigh had gone out and told the news to Mrs. Billow; she was deeply concerned at it, although her regret was evidently more for Sophy's sake than for that of her husband. She readily promised to do all in her power to soothe and comfort Sophy, and said she was sure that as soon as she felt equal to it, one or other of her kind neighbours would be glad to come over and sit with her; and she promised that should Sophy be taken worse, she would immediately telegraph for Dr. Ashleigh.
The doctor stayed till late in the afternoon, and then drove round to Sophy's medical attendant to tell him that she had just received the news of her husband's death, and to bespeak his best care and attention on her behalf. He afterwards returned to the station, and reached home at nine o'clock. I was very pleased to see him
