“Edith, my love!  My dearest Edith!” said Mrs. Waugh, going to her.

She half arose, and sank speechless into the kind arms opened to receive her.  Mrs. Waugh held her to her bosom a moment in silence, and then said: 

“Edith, my dear, I got a note from your friend, Miss Mayfield, saying that you had returned, and wished to see me.  But how is this, my child?  You have evidently been very ill—­you are still.  Where is your husband, Edith?  Edith, where is your husband?”

A shiver that shook her whole frame—­a choking, gasping sob, was all the answer she could make.

“Where is he, Edith?  Ordered away somewhere, upon some distant service?  That is hard, but never mind!  Hope for the best!  You will meet him again, dear?  But where is he, then?”

She lifted up her poor head, and uttering—­“Dead! dead!” dropped it heavily again upon the kind, supporting bosom.

“You do not mean it!  My dear, you do not mean it!  You do not know what you are saying!  Dead! when? how?” asked Mrs. Waugh, in great trouble.

“Shot! shot!” whispered the poor thing, in a tone so hollow, it seemed reverberating through a vault.  And then her stricken head sank heavily down—­and Henrietta perceived that strength and consciousness had utterly departed.  She placed her in the easy chair, and turned around to look for restoratives, when a door leading into an adjoining bedroom opened, and a young girl entered, and came quietly and quickly forward to the side of the sufferer.  She greeted Mrs. Waugh politely, and then gave her undivided attention to Edith, whose care she seemed fully competent to undertake.

This young girl was not over fourteen years of age, yet the most beautiful and blooming creature, Mrs. Waugh thought, that she had ever beheld.

Her presence in the room seemed at once to dispel the gloom and shadow.

She took Edith’s hand, and settled her more at ease in the chair—­but refused the cologne and the salammoniac that Mrs. Waugh produced, saying, cheerfully: 

“She has not fainted, you perceive—­she breathes—­it is better to leave her to nature for a while—­too much attention worries her—­she is very weak.”

Marian had now settled her comfortably back in the resting chair, and stood by her side, not near enough to incommode her in the least.

“I do not understand all this.  She says that her husband is dead, poor child—­how came it about?  Tell me!” said Mrs. Waugh, in a low voice.

Marian’s clear blue eyes filled with tears, but she dropped their white lids and long black lashes over them, and would not let them fall; and her ripe lips quivered, but she firmly compressed them, and remained silent for a moment.  Then she said, in a whisper: 

“I will tell you by and by,” and she glanced at Edith, to intimate that the story must not be rehearsed in her presence, however insensible she might appear to be.