A quick silent brightness came into her face: it may have been some change in the sunset lights. She was dead—lying in a serene and royal peace.
CHAPTER XLV.
WHAT AUNT SARAH LEFT FOR DOLLY.
...One that was a woman, sir;
But, rest her soul—she's dead!
—Shakspeare.
For an hour Frank kept watch alone in the empty rooms below. The doctor had come and gone. He said, as they knew he would, that all was over, there was nothing more to be done for Sarah Francis.
Frank had been for the doctor. He had sent a telegram to Mrs. Palmer; then he came back and waited below in the twilight room, out of which the mistress was gone for ever.
When death enters a house there is a moment's silence; then comes the silent tumult that follows death, everybody scared and bustling to the door, acquaintances leave their own names on bits of pasteboard, friends write notes, relations encamp in the dining-room, the pale faces of the living come and look at the place out of which a life has passed away. Servants come and go, busy with the fussy paraphernalia. It means kindness and honour to the dead, but it seems all contrived to make sorrow grotesque and horrible instead of only sorrowful.
When the rush of strangers and of neighbours came, it pushed in between Frank and the solemn silence up above. 'How had he come there?' they asked him. 'What had the doctor said?' 'How old was Lady Sarah?' 'Was it known how things were left?' Then Frank heard Mrs. Morgan sending out for black-edged paper in a whisper, and he started up and left them, for it all jarred upon him and he could bear it no longer.