“And I have made a dreadful suggestion to her, which she is turning over in her dreadful mind. She hates poor old Lady Piercey with a virulence which---- perhaps you may understand it, knowing the circumstances; I don’t. She is terribly disappointed that it was not the news which was the cause of the illness. And I have suggested that if the bridegroom could be sent home, the old lady might still hear it before she dies.” “The news--the bridegroom! Then it is so? They are married!” “That’s better, I suppose,” said the Colonel, “than if it had been worse.” Margaret coloured high at this enigmatical speech. “To everybody but Aunt Piercey,” she said. “My uncle will get used to the idea; but his mother! It is better he should not come than come to tell her that.” “If he comes we can surely keep him silent,” Colonel Piercey said. “I thought that was the one thing to be attained at all risks.” “And so it was. And I thank you, Cousin Gerald, and we can but do our best.” Lady Piercey turned her eyes towards the door as Margaret went into the room. A dreadful weariness was in those living eyes, which had not closed, in anything that could be called sleep, since her seizure. She had lain there dead, but for that look, for three days, unable to move a finger. But always her eyes turned to the door whenever it opened, however softly. Sometimes the film of a doze came over them; but no one came in without meeting that look--the look of a soul in prison, with no sense but that one remaining to make existence a fact. How much she knew of what was passing around her, they could not tell; or of her own condition, or of what was before her. All she seemed to know was that Gervase did not come. Sometimes her eyes fell upon Margaret with a look which seemed one of angry appeal. And then they returned to watch the door, which opened, indeed, from time to time, but never to admit her son. Oh, dreadful eyes! Mrs. Osborne shrank from encountering them. It was she, she only of whom they asked that question--she whom they seemed to blame. Where was Gervase? Why did he not come? Was he coming? Speech and hearing were alike gone. Her question was only in her eyes. And thus the evening and the morning made the fourth day. CHAPTER XXI.