"Write soon, grandpapa--write soon, and say you forgive me, and that I shall again be your own--
Presently the Misses Harmer--who always breakfasted much earlier together, and then retired to a dressing-room they had fitted up as a small oratory--were surprised at loud talking, and confusion in the house. In a short time their own maid knocked at the door, and then came in with a face full of excitement, to say that Miss Sophy had not slept in her bed, and that they had searched the whole house, and found no signs of her.
"Does my brother know?" Miss Harmer asked, after hearing the whole story very quietly to the end.
"I can't say, ma'am; there was a letter on Miss Sophy's table, which Mary took into Mr. Harmer, in the library, when she first found it, and he has not come out since."
The Misses Harmer, with their usual deliberate walk, went down stairs, and then into the library.
Mr. Harmer was sitting at the table, with his back to the door, and did not turn round at their approach. They went up. Beside him on the table lay an open letter--the one from Sophy;--in his hand was a pen, and before him a sheet of paper. On it he had written: "My dearest Sophy, come back; I forgive"--but the handwriting was strangely indistinct, and the last word, the word "forgive," was large and sprawling, like a schoolboy's writing, and then the pen stopped, and had stopped for ever;--Herbert Harmer was dead.
"Mr. Harmer is dead! Sophy Needham is missing!"
Such was the news a groom, riding into Canterbury for a doctor, brought; such was the telegram which a friend at once sent down to us at Ramsgate.
Mr. Harmer dead! Sophy Needham missing! It flashed like wildfire through Canterbury, and the quiet old town was again shaken out of its lethargy by the intelligence. Mr. Harmer, during his lifetime, had been a standing topic of conversation; he had on several occasions quite roused it from the even tenor of its way, but this last sensation was greater and more astounding than any of its predecessors, and Canterbury enjoyed it with proportionate gusto.
"Sophy Needham eloped with that notorious reprobate, Robert Gregory"--for the Misses Harmer, by their invectives on reading the letter, at once had told those round them with whom Sophy had fled-- "and poor Mr. Harmer gone off in a fit in consequence!!" It was indeed a terrible affair, and it was not mended in the telling. By the time the tale had made its round, it had swollen to extraordinary proportions--fresh additions were made by each mouth through which it passed, until at last it was extremely difficult to find out what the truth of the matter was.