Mary Ann sat there and gazed at him with her hollow eyes, from which the tears dropped slowly on her cadaverous cheeks. Mrs. Brewster stood before him, sobs choking her voice, wringing her hands. Yes, both were weeping, but he-- It is not in the presence of others that man gives way to grief, neither will tears come to him in the first leaden weight of anguish. Charles Taylor listened mechanically, as one cannot do otherwise, to the explanations of Mrs. Brewster. “Why did you not prepare me? why did you let it come upon me with this startling shock?” was his first remonstrance. “I did prepare you,” sobbed Mrs. Brewster. “I telegraphed to you as soon as it happened; I wrote the message to you with my own hand, and sent it to the office before I turned my attention to anything else.” “I received the message, but you did not say--I thought it was--” Charles Taylor turned his eyes toward Mary Ann. He remembered her condition in the midst of his own anguish and would not alarm her. “You did not mention Janey’s name,” he continued, to Mrs. Brewster; “how could I suppose you alluded to her or that she was sick?” Mary Ann divined his motive of hesitation; she was uncommonly keen in penetration, sharp--as the world goes--as the world says, and she had noted his words on entering, when he began to soothe Mrs. Brewster for the loss of a child. She had noticed his startled recoil when the news fell on him. She spoke up; a touch of her old vehemence; the tears stopped on her face and her eyes glistened. “You thought it was I who had died! Yes, you did, Mr. Taylor; and you need not try to deny it; you would not have cared, so that it was not Janey.” Charles had no intention of contradicting her; he turned from her in silence to look inquiringly and reproachfully at her mother. “Mr. Taylor, I could not prepare you better than I did,” said Mrs. Brewster, “when I wrote the letter telling of her illness.” “What letter?” interrupted Charles; “I received no letter.” “But you must have received it,” replied Mrs. Brewster, in her quick and sharp manner, not sharp with him, but from a rising doubt whether the letter had been miscarried. “I wrote it, and I know that it was safely mailed; you should have received it before you did the dispatch.” “I never had it,” said Charles. “When I waited in your drawing-room now I was listening for Janey’s footsteps to come to me.” Charles Taylor upon inquiry found that the letter had arrived duly and safely at Waterville at the time mentioned by Mrs. Brewster, but it appears that it was overlooked by the postmaster; but the shock had come now. He took a seat by the table, and covered his eyes with his hands, as the mother gave him a detailed account of her sickness and death. Not all the account that she or anybody else could give could take one iota from the dreadful fact staring him in the face; she was gone, gone forever from this world; he could never meet the glance of her eyes again or hear her voice in response to his own.