m employed in the clerk's office at Grailsea Station--"

"Yes?"

"I am sent here--"

He stopped again. His wandering eyes looked down at the mat, and his
restless hands wrung his cap harder and harder. He moistened his dry
lips, and tried once more.

"I am sent here on a very serious errand."

"Serious to _me_?"

"Serious to all in this house."

Miss Garth took one step nearer to him--took one steady look at his
face. She turned cold in the summer heat. "Stop!" she said, with
a sudden distrust, and glanced aside anxiously at the door of the
morning-room. It was safely closed. "Tell me the worst; and don't speak
loud. There has been an accident. Where?"

"On the railway. Close to Grailsea Station."

"The up-train to London?"

"No: the down-train at one-fifty--"

"God Almighty help us! The train Mr. Vanstone traveled by to Grailsea?"

"The same. I was sent here by the up-train; the line was just cleared in
time for it. They wouldn't write--they said I must see 'Miss Garth,' and
tell her. There are seven passengers badly hurt; and two--"

The next word failed on his lips; he raised his hand in the dead
silence. With eyes that opened wide in horror, he raised his hand and
pointed over Miss Garth's shoulder.

She turned a little, and looked back.

Face to face with her, on the threshold of the study door, stood
the mistress of the house. She held her old music-book clutched fast
mechanically in both hands. She stood, the specter of herself. With a
dreadful vacancy in her eyes, with a dreadful stillness in her voice,
she repeated the man's last words:

"Seven passengers badly hurt; and two--"

Her tortured fingers relaxed their hold; the book dropped from them; she
sank forward heavily. Miss Garth caught her before she fell--caught her,
and turned upon the man, with the wife's swooning body in her arms, to
hear the husband's fate.

"The harm is done," she said; "you may speak out. Is he wounded, or
dead?"

"Dead."

CHAPTER XI.

THE sun sank lower; the western breeze floated cool and fresh into the
house. As the evening advanced, the cheerful ring of the village clock
came nearer and nearer. Field and flower-garden felt the influence of
the hour, and shed their sweetest fragrance. The birds in Norah's aviary
sunned themselves in the evening stillness, and sang their farewell
gratitude to the dying day.

Staggered in its progress for a time only, the pitiless routine of the
house went horribly