"Hush! I don't want her to know I am here. Your husband told me she was sitting up, and in her right mind, but too weak to stand any more trouble. I wish I could run away, and never see her again, for when I go in there, I feel like I was carrying a knife to cut the heart out of a fawn, what the hounds had barely left life in. I can't bear the thought of having to tell her—"
Dyce covered her face with her shawl, to stifle her sobs, and her large frame shook. Mrs. Singleton whispered:
"Tell me quick. What is it."
"Miss Ellie is dead. I got there three days after she was buried."
The warden's wife sank into a chair, and drew the weeping negro into one beside her.
"Do you know exactly what time she died?"
"Yes—I had it all put down in black and white. She died on Tuesday night, just as the clock struck two; and the hospital nurse says—Lord, amercy, Miss Susan! are you going to faint? You have turned ashy!"
As Mrs. Singleton's thoughts recurred to the fact that it was at that hour that Beryl lay in the stupor of the crisis, from which she awoke perfectly conscious, and recalled the dream that the sick girl held as a vision, she felt a vague but bewildering dread seize her faculties, in defiance of cool reason, and scoffing scepticism.
"Go on, Dyce. I felt a little sick. Tell me—"
She paused and listened to an unusual and inexplicable noise issuing from the next room; the harsh sound of something scraping the bare floor.