Page:Alice Stuyvesant - The Vanity Box.djvu/81

 Maud felt sick, as if she were going to faint. Her weak nature reached out for help and comfort to some one stronger than herself. Like a frightened child, she turned to Terry, but Terry seemed transformed into a marble statue. Her face was drained of blood, and an expression of horror had frozen upon the clear features. As well seek comfort from a dead woman!

"Terry!" cried Mrs. Ricardo. Terry, do you hear what he says. Milly Hereward—murdered! Shot in the woods where I walk nearly every day. Oh, it can't be true! Such things don't happen—not to people we know. Milly couldn't be murdered. Why don't you speak? Terry—I believe I'm going to faint."

Then Terry did rouse herself. Her gaze came back from a distance, where it had been held by a terrible picture. She was very cold, and it was an effort to move, as if, even to stir a finger, she had had to break a sheath of ice which encased her body like armour. But she did move, going swiftly to Maud, and sitting down on the sofa beside her.

"Bring brandy," she said to the butler, as she slipped an arm round her cousin's wife, and clasped a hand that groped for hers.

"It's too much for me," Maud murmured. "I've been so ill all day."

"I'm very sorry, madam, if I broke the news too abruptly," said Dodson. "We all thought you ought