Lights were on in the hall; she met the night-nurse coming softly out of Sir Charles's bedroom. It was true, the old man had breathed his last about a quarter of an hour ago.
"Sooner than I expected even. I gave him another twenty-four hours. No need to wake anyone, let them sleep, I say. But as you're already up, you may care to lend a hand."
Esther nodded and the woman hurried away. A door opened quietly and Roger appeared, heavy-eyed, flushed, his dark-blue dressing-gown wrapped around him. She turned to him with eyes of compassion.
"Is it——?" he asked.
"Yes, a little while ago," she told him gently.
He came and stood beside her without speaking. Almost instinctively his hand closed over hers and held it fast. She felt the dry heat of his skin, the hard throbbing of a pulse.
A sudden panic seized her; the very name of Typhoid had become a shapeless dread, a horror creeping unseen, singling out its victims, playing with them as a cat does with a mouse, letting them go, then springing… She wanted to cry out, to warn the man beside her of approaching danger.
Warn him? Of what? What was she able to say, what dared she say? She took a firmer grip on herself. She must remember there was about one chance in a hundred of there being anything in her mad idea; she must say nothing till she knew for certain. There could be no immediate peril, unless, of course…. The needle again! Those injections, of anti-toxin they kept talking about … if only she knew, could be sure! Fresh terror assailed her, she felt herself caught in a trap….
What was this Roger was saying?
"Esther, I wasn't joking when I said I couldn't bear to have things jabbed into me. I'm not bothered a hang about myself, but I can't have poor Dido worried unnecessarily, at this time and all. Tell me—since she keeps on about that anti-toxin stuff—would you have it, or wouldn't you?"