“She died, poor crather. I see her draw the last gasp myself, and helped to straighten out her poor limbs. A naiter corpse I never saw. She was more natural than any wax image in a museum.”
“And what was her name?” asked Louis, turning pale as the question left his lips.
“I don’t well know, yer honor. They goes by numbers, not by names, in the hospital; and sometimes she muttered over one name, sometimes another, till it was hard to get the rights of it. Besides, she never said nothin’ about herself, only when she was out ov her head, as ye may say, wid the pain and trouble.”
“But you heard her mention some name, surely?” said Louis.
“Yes, and more ’an once, yer honor. First it was Mrs. Judson; then Barton; then Oakley; and then it was De Marke—that was the last word as ever left her poor lips.”
The brothers looked at each other again, and both grew pale as death.
“I thought it strange more ’an once, for there was two on ’em, and ye may well say they was both beauties, a-laying side by side—and when the fever was on ’em, this De Marke was on the tongue of one as well as t’other. You’d a thought they both knowed something about the man as bore that name.”
Louis De Marke went close to George, and leaned on his shoulder. George felt that he was trembling from head to foot, and drew him toward the sofa. “Let me question her,” he said, in a low voice, “the thing involves us both!”
Mary Margaret, who had been sorting the linen from her basket while she was speaking, now turned, and her eyes fell on the young men. She saw how pale they were, and stopped in some bewilderment.
“I will go,” she said, taking up her basket. “The old man is right; my tongue is always too fast for my teeth; what had I to do talking of sich to young gentlemen as knows nothing about ’em?”