‘There is something you have not told me. Tell me what it is,’ she said. It had been a momentary relief to her to know that Oliver was ill. If that was so, everything might be explained; but--And now she heard that there was something more. ‘Oh, Grace, go to bed; oh, go to bed. We don’t know ourselves yet. To-morrow morning, the very first thing, after you have had a night’s rest--’ ‘I cannot rest to-night,’ she said, with parched lips, ‘until I know. There is nothing that cannot be borne,’ she added, a moment afterwards, ‘except not to know.’ They made a curious contrast. Trix all flushed with excitement and distress, her voice choked with tears, her eyes overflowing; and she who was even more concerned, she who believed herself to be Oliver Wentworth’s bride, in that breathless silence of suspense, afraid to make a sound, to waste a word, lest perhaps she should miss some recollection, some indication of what to her was life or death. ‘I have something here to read, if you think you can bear it. It is not good news.’ ‘Oh, Tom, for the love of Heaven, don’t! Grace, go to your room, dear! Oh, go to bed, and I’ll come--I’ll come and tell you as soon as we know.’ ‘It is Oliver’s hand,’ said Grace. ‘I can bear whatever he has written. But let me hear it at once, for this suspense is more than I can bear.’ ‘Grace--Grace!--’ But Mr. Ford interrupted his wife. He saw that Grace was not to be put off any longer, and indeed was capable of nothing but knowing the truth. He brought the easiest chair for her, with that pathetic instinct which makes us so careful of the bodies of those whose hearts we are about to crush. She made no opposition. She would have done anything--anything, so long as it brought her nearer the end. Ford had the discrimination to see this, and that the only thing she could not bear was delay. He began at once to read the letter, of which he had already told the chief facts to his wife. The two candles flickered, placed together on the mantelpiece, and drearily doubled in the mirror behind, while the bare hotel room, with its big bed and wardrobes, formed an indistinct, cold background. Mr. Ford stood by the mantelpiece, and read slowly, in a voice of which he had not always command. Trix behind him, sobbing, crying, exclaiming, unable to restrain herself, moved up and down, sometimes stopping to look over his shoulder, sometimes throwing for a moment herself into a seat. In the centre, the white figure of Grace, all white, motionless, sat rigid, scarcely breathing. Grace was prepared for everything. Except a start and shiver when she heard of the marriage, she scarcely made a sign from beginning to end. The others were distracted, even in their own horror and pity, by an anxious desire to know how she would take it. But Grace was disturbed by no such secondary feelings. At that point her hands, which had been lying in her lap, closed in a convulsive clasp, but save this she made no sign,