On the first landing of the staircase two gentlemen were speaking to Mr. Jansenius, who hastily moved out of sight, not before a glimpse of his air of grief and discomfiture had given Trefusis a strange twinge, succeeded by a sensation of having been twenty years a widower. He smiled unconcernedly as he followed the girl into the library, and asked her how she did. She murmured some reply and hurried away, thinking that the poor young man would alter his tone presently.
He was joined at once by a gray whiskered gentleman, scrupulously dressed and mannered. Trefusis introduced himself, and the physician looked at him with some interest. Then he said:
“You have arrived too late, Mr. Trefusis. All is over, I am sorry to say.”
“Was the long railway journey she took in this cold weather the cause of her death?”
Some bitter words that the physician had heard upstairs made him aware that this was a delicate question. But he said quietly: “The proximate cause, doubtless. The proximate cause.”
“She received some unwelcome and quite unlooked-for intelligence before she started. Had that anything to do with her death, do you think?”
“It may have produced an unfavorable effect,” said the physician, growing restive and taking up his gloves. “The habit of referring such events to such causes is carried too far, as a rule.”
“No doubt. I am curious because the event is novel in my experience. I suppose it is a commonplace in yours. Pardon me. The loss of a lady so young and so favorably circumstanced is not a commonplace either in my experience or in my opinion.” The physician held up his head as he spoke, in protest against any assumption that his sympathies had been blunted by his profession.
“Did she suffer?”
“For some hours, yes. We were able to do a little to alleviate her pain—poor thing!” He almost forgot Trefusis as he added the apostrophe.