"She does not understand how ill John is," she thought.
But Mr.Dale knew better.

"How love's horror of death sweeps away all small things," he said, as he sat alone in his study that night,--"time, hope, fear, even grief itself!" His wife did not enter into such analysis; she had been summoned, and had seen to wraps and money and practical things, and then had gone crying up-stairs.

"Poor child," she said, "poor child! She doesn't feel it yet." A calamity like this Mrs.Dale could understand; she had known the sorrow of death, and all the impatience which had stood between Helen and herself was swept away in her pitying sympathy.
As for Lois, Helen had not forbidden her, and she too had gone to Mercer.
Helen had not seemed even to notice her presence in the carriage, and she dared not speak.

She thought, in a vague way, that she had never known her cousin before.

Helen, with white, immovable face, sat leaning forward, her hand on the door, her tearless eyes straining into the distance, and a tense, breathless air of waiting about her.
"May I go to Lockhaven with you ?" Lois asked softly; but Helen did not answer until she had repeated the question, and then she turned with the start of one suddenly wakened, and looked at her.
"Oh, you are here ?" she said.