To us at Ramsgate the news came with a terrible shock. Papa, who had settled to have gone over on that day, had, from some reason or other, postponed it to the next; consequently, he was with me when the boy arrived from the station with the telegram at about twelve o'clock.
It happened to be a wet day, so that, contrary to our usual habit, we were indoors when the boy came up with the note. Papa signed the receipt, and the lad left before he opened it. When he did so, he glanced at the contents, and dropped it on the table with almost a groan.
"What is it, papa?" I asked, dreadfully alarmed; "may I read it?" Papa motioned assent, and my heart almost stood still as I read the terrible tidings--
"Mr. Harmer is dead; Sophy Needham is missing."
It was a dreadful shock; and yet we had talked and thought so much the last two days of Sophy and Robert Gregory, and of the consequences the discovery of their connection might have upon Mr. Harmer, that it could be hardly said to come upon us as a surprise. For some time we were too shocked to speak at all. At last I said--
"Rather poor Sophy," papa said. "Unfortunate, misguided girl, how bitterly she will repent this! What a life-long remorse hers will be! She has sacrificed the happiness of her own life by joining it to that of Robert Gregory, and she has caused her benefactor's death; and whatever be the folly, whatever the terrible fault of Sophy's conduct now, undoubtedly she loved him dearly."
While papa was speaking, another telegram arrived, and this time from Miss Harmer, for the former one was sent by a friend who had heard the news, and knowing our interest in it, had at once forwarded it to us, while the groom who brought it in, was searching for a doctor to go over at once. Miss Harmer's message was only--
"Please come at once. My brother is dead."
On the receipt of this, we consulted a timetable, found a train would start in half an hour, and in a few minutes papa started, leaving me to cry over the news I had heard--to cry as much for Sophy as for Mr. Harmer--(for, from what papa said, she was indeed to be pitied), and to look forward anxiously to his return with full particulars of the terrible event.
I shall tell the story of his visit to Harmer Place, and its results, as he told it to me; and I may here mention that in future, in this narrative of mine, I shall always drop the first person when I am telling of events at which I was not myself present, and shall relate them in the order in which they happened, and not when they were told to me, which was not, in some cases, till years after.