Left to themselves in such circumstances, the poor girls had no alternative but to be crushed altogether, or to rise into heroic fortitude; and happily Grace had strength enough for that better part. She dressed herself, when the dreadful morning came, in the only black frock her wardrobe contained, with the composure of a creature braced by the worst that could happen, and knowing now that whatever might come, nothing so terrible could fall on her again. The shock, instead of prostrating her as it did her sister, seemed to rally all her forces, and clear and strengthen every faculty. She had scarcely slept, notwithstanding the calming dose which the doctor in his pity had insisted upon administering to both. It procured for poor little Milly some hours of feverish unconsciousness, but with Grace it acted on the mind, not the body, numbing the pain but giving an unnatural and vivid force to all her faculties. Her brain seemed to be beset by thoughts; and first among them was a yearning sympathy and pity for her mother. The sudden shock of a curtly worded telegram would be so novel, so terrible, to that happy woman, who never all her life had known what great sorrow was, that her young daughter shuddered at the thought. As soon as she got up she began to write to her, while Milly still tossed and moaned in her unquiet sleep. Grace’s letter was such as no poet, save one of the highest genius, could have written. It was love and not she that composed it. It was a history of all the last days, tender and distinct as a picture. Every word that she said led up to the terrible news at the end, imperceptibly, gradually, as it is the art of tragedy to do, so that the reader should perceive the inevitable and feel it coming without the horror of a sudden shock. When her sister woke she read this letter to her, and they wept over it together. It was almost as new to Milly as it would be to her mother, for she had not realised the slow constant progress of the days to this event, nor had Grace herself done so, till she had begun to put it down upon paper. When the doctor came in the morning the letter was all ready, put up and addressed; and then it was that Grace insisted no telegram should be sent. “Mamma has never had any trouble all her life. He always did everything. Nothing dreadful has ever happened to us. The children have been ill, but they always got better. We never were afraid of anything. If this were flung at mamma like a shot--like a blow--it might kill her too.” “Yes, it might kill her too,” Milly murmured, turning to the doctor her large strained eyes. “But, my dear children, somebody must come to you at once; you can’t be left here alone. Your mother will be strengthened to bear it as you are, and for your sake. Somebody must come to you at once.” “O Gracie!” murmured Milly, looking at her sister with beseeching eyes.