‘My darling!—­it is a great comfort to see you again.’

’Only that I knew that one less in the house would be a saving to you I should not have gone.  When there is unhappiness, people should stay together;—­shouldn’t they, mamma?’ They were sitting quite close to each other, on an old sofa in a small upstairs room, from which a door opened into the larger chamber in which Mr Crawley was lying.  It had been arranged between them that on this night Mrs Crawley should remain with her husband, and that Grace should go to bed.  It was now past one o’clock, but she was still there, clinging to her mother’s side, with her mother’s arm drawn round her.  ‘Mamma,’ she said, when they had both been silent for some ten minutes.  ‘I have got something to tell you.’

‘Tonight?’

‘Yes, mamma; tonight, if you will let me.’

’But you promised that you would go to bed.  You were up all last night.’

‘I am not sleepy, mamma.’

’Of course you shall tell me what you please, dearest.  Is it a secret?  Is it something I am not to repeat?’

’You must say how that ought to be, mamma.  I shall not tell it to anyone else.’

‘Well, dear?’

’Sit comfortably, mamma;—­there; like that, and let me have your hand.  It’s a terrible story to have to tell.’

‘A terrible story, Grace?’

’I mean that you must not draw away from me.  I shall want to feel that you are quite close to me.  Mamma, while I was at Allington, Major Grantly came there?’

‘Did he, my dear?’

‘Yes, mamma.’

‘Did he know them before?’

’No, mamma; not at the Small House.  But he came there—­to see me.  He asked me—­to be his wife.  Don’t move, mamma.’

’My darling child!  I won’t move, dearest.  Well; and what did you say to him?  God bless him, at any rate.  May God bless him, because he has seen with a true eye, and felt with a noble instinct.  It is something, Grace, to have been wooed by such a man at such a time.’

‘Mamma, it did make me feel proud; it did.’

’You had known him well before—­of course?  I knew that you and he were friends, Grace.’

’Yes, we were friends.  I always liked him.  I used not to know what to think about him.  Miss Anne Prettyman told me that it would be so; and once before I had thought so myself.’

‘And had you made up your mind what to say to him?’

‘Yes, I did then.  But I did not say it.’

‘Did not say what you had made up your mind to say?’

‘That was before all this happened to papa.’

‘I understand you, dearest.’

’When Miss Anne Prettyman told me that I should be ready with my answer, and when I saw that Miss Prettyman herself used to let him come to the house and seemed to wish that I should see him when he came, and when he once was—­so very gentle and kind, and when he said that he wanted me to love Edith—­Oh, mamma!’