On the very next morning the news came of their stepmother's death. It was entirely unexpected by them, for they had no idea of the gradual weakness which had been stealing over that poor little woman, and they were moved by deep compunction as well as natural regret. It is impossible not to feel that we might have been kinder, might have made life happier to those that are gone--a feeling experienced the moment that we know them to be certainly gone, and inaccessible to all kindness. "Oh, poor Mrs. St. John!" said Mab, dropping a few natural tears. Cicely was more deeply affected. She was the eldest and had thought the most; as for the young artist, her feeling ran into the tips of her fingers, and got expansion there; but Cicely had no such medium. She went about mournfully all day long, and in the evening Mab found her seated at the window of their attic, looking out with her eyes big with tears upon the darkening sea. When her sister touched her on the shoulder Cicely's tears fell. "Oh, poor Miss Brown!" she said, her heart having gone back to the time when they had no grievance against their kind little governess. "Oh, Mab, if one could only tell her how one was sorry! if she could only see into my heart now!" "Perhaps she can," said Mab, awe-stricken and almost under her breath, lifting her eyes to the clear wistful horizon in which the evening star had just risen. "And one could have said it only yesterday!" said Cicely, realizing for the first time that mystery of absolute severance; and what light thoughts had been in their minds yesterday! Sighs for Alice Robinson's ball, depression of soul and spirit caused by the distant strains of the Lancers, and the "Blue Danube"--while this tragedy was going on, and the poor soul who had been good to them, but to whom they had not been good, was departing, altogether and for ever out of reach. Cicely in her sorrow blamed herself unjustly, as was natural, and mourned for the mystery of human shortsightedness as well as for Mrs. St. John. But I do not mean to say that this grief was very profound after the first sting, and after that startling impression of the impossibility of further intercourse was over. The girls went out quietly in the afternoon, and bought black stuff to make themselves mourning, and spoke to each other in low voices and grave tones. Their youthful vigour was subdued--they were overawed to feel as it were the wings of the great Death-Angel overshadowing them. The very sunshine looked dim, and the world enveloped in a cloud. But it was within a week or two of Miss Blandy's "breaking up," and they could not go away immediately. Miss Blandy half audibly expressed her satisfaction that Mrs. St. John was only their step-mother. "Had she been their own mother, what should we have done?" she said. So that it was not till the end of July, when the establishment broke up, that the girls were at last able to get home. CHAPTER VI. THE GIRLS AT HOME.