The weeks they spent alone she dreaded; from the morning greeting in the breakfast room to the moment when he gave her the quiet "Good-night" that might have come from an undemonstrative brother, she was in terror lest an unguarded word, a chance expression, might tell him what she sought to keep from him. But so insensible did his own constant pre-occupation of mind make him appear of much that passed, that she feared his intuition less than that of Peters who she was convinced had a very shrewd idea of the state of affairs existing between them. It was manifested in diverse ways; not by any spoken word direct or indirect, but by additional fatherly tenderness of manner, by unfailing tactfulness, by quick intervention that had saved many awkward situations. It was practically impossible in view of his almost daily association with the house and its inmates that he could be unaware of certain facts. But the wise kindly eyes that she had feared most were closed for ever.
The Great Summons for which Miss Craven had been so calmly prepared had come more suddenly, more tragically even than she had anticipated. She had passed over as she would have wished, had she been given the choice, not in the awful loneliness of death but one of a company of heroic souls who had voluntarily and willingly stood aside that others might have the chance to live.
A few months after the marriage on which she had set her heart the family curse had seized her as suddenly and as imperatively as it had ever done her nephew. An exhibition of statuary in America had served as an adequate excuse and she had started at comparatively short notice, accompanied by the faithful Mary, after a stormy interview with her doctor, whose gloomy warnings she refuted with the undeniable truism that one land was as good as another to die in. Within a few hours of the American coast the tragedy, short and overwhelming, had occurred.
From the parent ice a thousand miles away in the north the stupendous white destruction had moved majestically down its appointed course to loom out of the pitch-black night with appalling consequence. A sudden crash, slight enough to be unnoticed by hundreds, a convulsive shudder of the great ship like the death struggle of a Titan, had been followed by unquellable panic, confusion of darkness, inadequate boats and jamming bulkheads. Miss Craven and Mary were among the first on deck and for the short space of time that remained they worked side by side among the terror-stricken women and children, their own life-belts early transferred to dazed mothers who clutched wild-eyed at wailing babes. Together they had stood back from the overcrowded boats, smiling and unafraid; together they had gone down into the mystery of the deep, two gallant women, no longer mistress and maid but sisters in sacrifice and in the knowledge of that greater love for which they cheerfully laid down their lives.