For a few moments the poor painted hall, with its gaunt umbrella stand and cold black and white marble floor, seemed to be rocking up and down, and spinning round and round. The revulsion of feeling was so intense that the girl staggered up against the wall, fighting hard with her palpitating heart.

"Oh, Nancy, what is it?" cried Edith, staring in a fright at her sister's chalk-white face. "Is it bad news?"

"Oh, no, GOOD news; the best news. Where's Mother? I----" she could not speak, she simply could not finish the sentence. Her trembling lips refused to perform their office. In her shaking hands she still clutched the precious letter, and gathering her wits together, she turned and literally tore down the stairs to the bas.e.m.e.nt.

"Mother! Mother! Where are you?" she cried.

"What is it?" cried Mrs. Macdonald, who, poor soul, was ready for all and every evil that could fall upon her.

For a moment Nancy tried to control herself sufficiently to speak, but the revulsion of feeling was too great. Twice she opened her mouth, but no words would come. Then she dropped all of a heap at her mother's feet, and hiding her head upon her knee, she burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Then she dropped all of a heap at her mother's feet, and hiding her head upon her knee, she burst into a pa.s.sion of tears.]

In spite of her acidity, and her disputes with Providence and things in general, Mrs. Macdonald still retained some of her mother's instinct.

She drew the girl's head to her breast, and held her there tightly, with a tragic at-least-we-will-all-die-together air that was utterly pathetic. She had no words of consolation for what she believed was some new and terrible trouble come upon them. Then, as Nancy still sobbed on, she drew the letter from her unresisting fingers, mastered its contents, and sat like a woman turned to stone.

"I am afraid," she said, after a long silence, "that I have been very cruel to you, Nancy. I have called your scribbling, rubbish; I have scolded you; I have been very hard on you; and instead of my being punished for my blindness, it is _your_ work which has come to save me from the end which I so dreaded. But I shall never forgive myself."

But Nancy, the storm over, brushed the tears away from her eyes, and sat back, resting her elbow upon her mother's knee.

"Oh, it is very silly of me to go on like this," half laughing, and half inclined to weep yet more. "I have been so worried you know, Mother.

It's really stupid of me; but you mustn't blame yourself now that good luck has come to us, must you? You did what you thought was right, and you had a right to speak; and, after all, I _did_ leave everything to you--everything, and I might have wasted all my time. You were quite right, Mother."

"What was that line Willie was writing in his copybook last week?" said Mrs. Macdonald, holding the girl's hand fast, and looking, oh, so unlike her usual self--"Torches were made to burn; jewels to wear."