"I am afraid there is, sir. Don't take on so, sir, don't! I am sorry I spoke."
"You have done what is right," Aaron groaned.
"We must all of us be prepared, sir; trouble comes to all of us."
"Alas, it is a human heritage! But you do not know what this means to me--you do not know what it means to me."
"Perhaps I have made things out worse than they are; I hope so, I am sure. But you ask the doctor, sir, and don't give way. I shall think of your lady a good deal when I'm gone."
With that, and with a sympathetic look at him, the woman departed.
At length, at length, the truth had been spoken; at length, at length, he knew the worst. It was as if a sentence of death had been pronounced. His Rachel, his beloved wife, the tenderest, the truest that man had ever been blessed with, was to be taken from him. His child, also, perhaps; but that was a lesser grief, upon which he had no heart to brood. His one overwhelming anxiety was for Rachel, who, as it now seemed to him, was lying at death's door in the room above.
He had some soup ready, and he took a basin up to her.
"Can you drink this, dear?"
"I will try."