had been taken from them suddenly in the night, evidently in her
sleep.

Carey turned very white, but said only "Oh! why did I go without
them?"

It was such an overwhelming shock as left no room for tears. Her
first thought, the only one she seemed to have room for, was to get
back to her husband by the next train. She would have taken all the
children, but that Mrs. Acton insisted, almost commanded, that they
should be left under her charge, and reminded her that their father
wished them to be out of London; nor did Allen and Robert show any
wish to return to a house of mourning, being just of the age to be so
much scared at sorrow as to ignore it. And indeed their mother was
equally new to any real grief; her parents had been little more than
a name to her, and the only loss she had actually felt was that of a
favourite schoolfellow.

She had no time to think or feel till she had reached the train and
taken her seat, and even then the first thing she was conscious of
was a sense of numbness within, and frivolous observation without, as
she found herself trying to read upside down the direction of her
opposite neighbour's parcels, counting the flounces on her dress, and
speculating on the meetings and partings at the stations; yet with a
terrible weight and soreness on her all the time, though she could
not think of the dear grannie, of whom it was no figure of speech to
say that she had been indeed a mother. The idea of her absence from
home for ever was too strange, too heartrending to be at once
embraced, and as she neared the end of her journey on that long day,
Carey's mind was chiefly fixed on the yearning to be with her husband