"He's very ill indeed, sir."
"Not seriously ill?"
Elsie drooped her head and showed signs of crying.
"Not in danger?"
Elsie replied with a sob:
"He'll never get up again, sir."
"Good God! Good God! What next? What next? Er—I—er—I'm sorry to hear this. I'm—er—tell him, tell Mrs. Earlforward, I——" And, murmuring to himself, he walked rapidly out of the dim shop. He was at an age when the distant shuffling and rumbling of death could positively frighten. In an instant he had seen the folly, the futility, of collecting books. You could not take first editions with you when you—went. Death loomed enormous over him, like a whole firmament threatening to fall.
Elsie heard a footfall on the stairs, and Mrs. Earlforward came with deliberation down to such light as there was, her fixed eyes glinting and blazing on the sinner submissive in disgrace. Elsie stood tremulous before those formidable eyes. She could scarcely believe that they were the same eyes which had melted in confidences to her on the previous morning. And they were not the same eyes. They were the eyes of an old woman with harsh, implacable features, petrified and incapable of mobility.
"What were you saying to that gentleman?"
"I was only telling him he couldn't see you or master because master was ill, 'm."