"Try and drink it, Miss Zella dear; it'll do you good," said the maid, sobbing.
"I can't—take it away," moaned Zella, although she was faint from crying and want of food.
"Oh, Miss Zella dear, you must. Whatever will your poor papa do if you're ill! you've got to be a comfort to him now."
Zella sobbed drearily.
"Do try and take just a drop, like a dear. Sophia!" cried the maid in a sort of subdued call, as another servant went past the open door, and cast a pitying look at the little prone figure on the bed.
"Sophia ! whatever can I do with Miss Zella if she won't eat nor drink? I tell her she'll be ill—won't she?—if she goes on crying so."
"And she didn't eat a morsel of breakfast, either," chimed in Sophia.
"Come, Miss Zella, do have a try, like a dear!"
The two servants coaxed and implored the child, the violence of whose sobs had now redoubled, until she at length sat up and choked over a few mouthfuls of the tea, long since grown cold.
"That's a brave young lady," said the kind maids admiringly as they went away, whispering to one another that poor Miss Zella had a terrible amount of feeling, and had been crying all night.
"The master, he hasn't shed a tear yet. Stunned, I believe," said Sophia.
And they descended to the lower regions, to join in the innumerable comments on the awful suddenness of it all, and the " dreadful feeling " produced by a death in the house.
Towards six o'clock the wheels of the carriage were heard, and Louis came out of his wife's room with his set face of resolute composure, and went into the hall to greet his sister-in-law.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans was a tall, good-looking woman, still under forty, and looking even younger than she was. She resembled Esmée de Kervoyou in nothing.
Her face was swollen with tears, and she was in black, with a heavy crepe veil.
"Louis! Louis!" she wrung her brother-in-law's hand: "I can't believe it—our poor, poor darling! . . ." Her voice died away under the crepe veil.
"It was very good of you to come so quickly," said Louis gently. "Have you had tea, Marianne?"
She shook her head and negatived the suggestion by a quick movement.
"Where is poor, poor little Zella?" inquired Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.
"I will send for her: come into the drawing-room."
In the drawing-room a fresh paroxysm of sobbing overtook her, as she raised the heavy veil and looked around her.
"Last time I was here—how different! Oh, her workbox—her piano!" Louis rang the bell.
"It must have been fearfully sudden—your letter gave me no idea; and the shock of the telegram was terrible. You were with her?"
"Yes," said Louis in an expressionless voice. "I will tell you all you want to hear, Marianne; but pray try and —and be brave now. I will send for Zella."
"How is she?" said his sister-in-law, wiping her eyes.
The servant entered.
"Will you bring tea, and tell Miss Zella that Mrs. Lloyd-Evans has arrived?"
"How is the poor child?" again inquired her aunt.
"She is very much overwrought," said Louis calmly, "and has cried herself almost ill. I shall be very grateful, Marianne, if you will help her through the next two or three days, and induce her to eat and sleep properly, and try to check her tears. Her mother would not wish her to cry so, and make herself ill."
"It is far more natural that she should cry, and will be better for her in the end," said Marianne Lloyd-Evans almost resentfully. "And how can she not cry, unless she were utterly heartless and callous—her own mother, and, oh, what a devoted one!" Louis remembered the number of times that Marianne had accused Esmée of spoiling her only child, and said nothing.
When Zella entered, her aunt sprang up with a cry of pity, and clasped the little forlorn figure in her arms.
Zella's tears began afresh at the tenderness, and they wept together. Louis de Kervoyou gazed again out of the window, where darkness was falling over the garden, and presently left the room.
He did not again see his sister-in-law until they met at dinner.
At the sight of Esmée's empty chair she started a little and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. They spoke very little while the servants were in the room. The strange awe that fills a house visited by death hung heavy in the silence.
Once Louis asked, "Has Zella gone to bed?" and her aunt said, "Yes, she is worn out. I gave her a little something that will put her to sleep."
When dinner was over, and they were again in the drawing-room, Marianne said rather nervously:
"I shall be glad to go to bed early to-night, but I wanted to ask you first, Louis, about arrangements."
"The funeral is to be on Thursday. There is no reason to make it any later. It will be here, of course."
"She would have wished that," murmured Marianne "—to lie in the little churchyard so near her own home. Oh, Louis, Louis! I can't realize she's gone."
Louis listened to her as in a dream, but spoke very gently:
"It has been a terrible shock to you. I wish you could have had more preparation, but no one anticipated it until the very day before, when I sent you the first telegram."
"I know—I know. Can you bear to tell me how it all was?"
There was little enough to tell, but Louis told her briefly of his wife's short illness and painless death. She had died unconscious.
"No words—no message?" sobbed Mrs. Lloyd-Evans.
"She did not know that she was dying."
"The clergyman?"
"I did not send for him," replied Louis quietly.
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had long known that her brother-in-law was "nothing," as she phrased it, with regard to religious convictions, and she had often feared that poor Esmée, since her marriage, had given up even going to church, which, to Mrs. Lloyd-Evans, was synonymous with atheism. She said no more, but bade Louis an emotional good-night, and went slowly up to her room, although it was very little after nine.
Louis, left alone at last, went out into the dusk of the garden.
"Esmée! Esmée!"
He wondered if he could retain his sanity.
"Zella, my child, have you nothing black to put on?" Mrs. Lloyd-Evans had never addressed her niece as "my child before, and had she done so Zella would have resented it extremely, but now it appeared to them both as appropriately solemn.
next morning, looked at her aunt with vague, dark circled eyes. She was still in her white petticoat, and looked pathetically small and childish.
"I hadn't thought of that, Aunt Marianne," she faltered. "Must I put on black things?"
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans thought that the gentlest of hints might not come amiss, in order to counteract any possible unconventional ideas on the part of poor Louis, who, after all, was far more French than English.
"You see, dear," she said very gently, " it is as a mark of respect. One doesn't want anyone—the servants or anybody—to think one doesn't care. You will wear mourning a year for your dear, dear mother. That is what is customary."
"Will papa want me to? asked Zella unexpectedly.
"He will want you to do what is right, darling. Aunt Marianne will talk to him about it."
Mrs. Lloyd-Evans habitually