“I don’t think he will come by train,” she replied.  “He will jog back—­as Magdalen flippantly expressed it—­in the miller’s gig.”

As she said the words, there was a knock at the library door.  The footman appeared, and addressed himself to Miss Garth.

“A person wishes to see you, ma’am.”

“Who is it?”

“I don’t know, ma’am.  A stranger to me—­a respectable-looking man—­and he said he particularly wished to see you.”

Miss Garth went out into the hall.  The footman closed the library door after her, and withdrew down the kitchen stairs.

The man stood just inside the door, on the mat.  His eyes wandered, his face was pale—­he looked ill; he looked frightened.  He trifled nervously with his cap, and shifted it backward and forward, from one hand to the other.

“You wanted to see me?” said Miss Garth.

“I beg your pardon, ma’am.—­You are not Mrs. Vanstone, are you?”

“Certainly not.  I am Miss Garth.  Why do you ask the question?”

“I am 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.