"I suppose we must prepare the luncheon, Miss Doris?" said Susan, when, at length, in answer to her persistent knocking at the door, Doris turned the key to admit her, and as she spoke the woman cast an inquiring glance toward the letter in Doris’s hand.
"Lunch? Oh, yes, Susan! Mr. Hamilton, Mrs. Cameron, and the others will be coming--although----" The poor girl broke down and wept.
"Don’t, Miss Doris! Don’t cry so, dear!" said Susan, pityingly, wiping her own tears away as she spoke. "Master and mistress may return in time to sit down with their guests."
"No, they won’t. They’ll never come back!" exclaimed Doris, with another burst of sobs.
"What do they say in the letter?" asked the old servant.
"It’s awful!" replied Doris. "Just see"--she passed the letter, with a trembling hand--"see what mother has written to me. _You_ may read it, Susan, though no one else shall. There’s a message for you in it about the house."
Susan adjusted her glasses and began to read the letter with some difficulty, for tears were in her eyes, and she had to take off her spectacles again and again in order to wipe them away.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear!" she ejaculated more than once, as she read the letter. "That I should have lived to see this day! My poor mistress! What she must be suffering!"
"And father!" exclaimed Doris. "Oh, how miserable he must be! For it is his fault, you know, and the knowledge of that must be so dreadful."
"I cannot understand his doing it," said Susan, looking deeply pained. "Such a high-minded, honourable gentleman as he always seemed. Your poor mother! your poor mother!" she repeated. "What must she be feeling."
"It’s bad for me, too," said Doris, "to be deserted, to be left behind like this."
"Aye, dearie, it is," sighed the old servant, looking at her with great affection. "But you must remember, ’When my father and mother forsake me then the Lord taketh me up.’"
"I don’t feel as if He takes _me_ up," sobbed Doris, whose mind was too full of trouble to receive any comfort just then. "Father and mother _might_ have kissed me and said good-bye! Oh, it was cruel, cruel to steal away when I was asleep!" And again she cried as if her heart would break.
Susan endeavoured to calm her, but for some time in vain. At last, however, the old servant, glancing at the small clock on the mantelpiece, exclaimed: