CALAMITY.
One afternoon the post brought side by side with a letter from lord Gartley, one in a strange-looking cramped hand, which Mrs. Raymount recognized.
"What can Sarah be writing about?" she said, a sudden foreboding of evil crossing her mind.
"The water-rate perhaps," answered Hester, opening her own letter as she withdrew to read it. For she did not like to read Gartley's letters before her mother--not from shyness, but from shame: she would have liked ill to have her learn how poor her Gartley's utterances were upon paper. But ere she was six slow steps away, she turned at a cry from her mother.
"Good heavens, what can it be? Something has happened to him!" said Mrs. Raymount.
Her face was white almost as the paper she held. Hester put her arms round her.
"Mother! mother! wh
