At last, late on the long summer day, she was at the terminus, and with a heart beating so fast that she could hardly breathe, found herself in a cab, driving up to her own door, just as the twilight was darkening.

How dark it looked within, with all the blinds down!  The servant who opened the door thought Miss Janet was in the drawing-room, but the master was out.  It sounded desolate, and Carey ran up stairs, craving and eager for the kiss of her child-—the child who must have borne the brunt of the shock.

The room was silent, all dusky and shadowed; the window-frames were traced on the blinds by the gas freshly lighted outside, and moving in the breeze with a monotonous dreariness.  Carey stood a moment, and then her eyes getting accustomed to the darkness, she discerned a little heap lying curled up before the ottoman, her head on a great open book, asleep—-poor child! quite worn out.  Carey moved quietly across and sat down by her, longing but not daring to touch her.  The lamp was brought up in a minute or two, and that roused Janet, who sprang up with a sudden start and dazzled eyes, exclaiming “Father!  Oh, it’s Mother Carey!  Oh, mother, mother, please don’t let him go!”

“And you have been all alone in the house, my poor child,” said Carey, as she felt the girl shuddering in her close embrace.

“Mrs. Lucas came to stay with me, but I didn’t want her,” said Janet, “so I told her she might go home to dinner.  It’s father-—”

“Where is father?”

“Those horrid people in Tottenham Court Road sent for him just as he had come home,” said Janet.

“He went out as usual?”

“Yes, though he had such a bad cold.  He said he could not be spared; and he was out all yesterday till bedtime, or I should have told him grandmamma was not well.”

“You thought so!”

“Yes, she panted and breathed so oddly; but she would not let me say a word to him.  She made me promise not, but being anxious about him helped to do it.  Dr. Lucas said so.”

There was a strange hardness and yet a trembling in Janet’s voice; nor did she look as if she had shed tears, though her face was pale and her eyes black-ringed, and when old nurse, now very old indeed, tottered in sobbing, she flung herself to the other end of the room.  It was more from nurse than from Janet that Carey learnt the particulars, such as they were, namely, that the girl had been half-dressed when she had taken alarm from her grandmother’s unresponsive stillness, and had rushed down to her father’s room.  He had found that all had long been over.  His friend, old Dr. Lucas, had come immediately, and had pronounced the cause to have been heart complaint.

Nurse said her master had been “very still,” and had merely given the needful orders and written a few letters before going to his patients, for the illness was at its height, and there were cases for which he was very anxious.