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CHAPTER XV.
ESTRANGEMENT.
"A something light as air—a look—
A word unkind or wrongly taken;
Oh! love, that tempests never shook,
A word—a breath—like this has shaken."
In the silent and lonely hours of the
sleepless night it had seemed to Alice
a very simple and easy thing to ask
the question she meditated, and obtain
from her grandmother the information
she desired, and she longed for the coming
day to dawn that she might begin her investigation;
but in the clear light of day it
seemed neither so easy nor so practicable,
and she almost trembled at the temerity of
her own purpose.
She glanced at her grandmother's stern, set face (all the more stern from her midnight resolve), and her habitual awe and reverence for the old woman came back to her
