After a painful silence she got up and busied herself with reviving Molly's fire, which had almost gone out. She felt as she had felt only once before in her life, and that had been ten years previously, when her only child had died suddenly. She wished passionately that she were back in Calcutta with her husband. She hated the bleak English winter, the cruel English seas.
Molly lay quite still for some time, her young face drawn and stricken.
At length she got up and went to the window. It was a morning of bleak winds and shifting clouds. The sea was just visible, very far and dim and grey. She stood a long while gazing stonily out.
"Can I get you anything, darling?" said Mrs. Langdale's voice softly behind her.
"No, thank you," the girl said, without turning. "Please leave me; that's all!"
And Mrs. Langdale crept away through the hushed house to her own apartment, there to lay down her head and cry herself exhausted. Dear, gallant Charlie! Her heart ached for him. His irrepressible gaiety, his reckless generosity, these had become the attributes of a hero for ever in her eyes.
After a while her hostess came to her, pale and tearful, to beg her, if she possibly could, to show herself at the breakfast table. Captain Fisher had repeatedly asked for her, she said; and he seemed very uneasy.
Mrs. Langdale rose, washed her face, and made an effort to powder away the evidence of her grief. Then she went bravely down and faced the silent crowd in the breakfast room. No one was eating anything. The very air smote chill and cheerless as she entered. As if he had been lying in wait for her, Fisher pounced upon her on the threshold.
"I must speak to you for a moment," he said. "Come into the smoking-room!"
Mrs. Langdale accompanied him without a word.
"How is she?" he demanded, almost before they entered. "How did she take it?"
There was something about Fisher just then with which Mrs. Langdale was wholly unacquainted. He was alert, impatient, almost feverish. She answered him with brevity.
He began to pace to and fro with heavy restlessness.
"Ask her to come to me if she is up!" he said at length. "Tell her--tell her not to be afraid! Say I am waiting for her. I must see her."
"She asked me to leave her alone," she said irresolutely.