‘Why?’ said the woman, starting up.
‘Undraw that curtain!’ repeated the surgeon in an agitated tone.
‘I darkened the room on purpose,’ said the woman, throwing herself before him as he rose to undraw it.—‘Oh! sir, have pity on me! If it can be of no use, and he is really dead, do not expose that form to other eyes than mine!’
‘This man died no natural or easy death,’ said the surgeon. ‘I must see the body!’ With a motion so sudden, that the woman hardly knew that he had slipped from beside her, he tore open the curtain, admitted the full light of day, and returned to the bedside.
‘There has been violence here,’ he said, pointing towards the body, and gazing intently on the face, from which the black veil was now, for the first time, removed. In the excitement of a minute before, the female had thrown off the bonnet and veil, and now stood with her eyes fixed upon him. Her features were those of a woman about fifty, who had once been handsome. Sorrow and weeping had left traces upon them which not time itself would ever have produced without their aid; her face was deadly pale; and there was a nervous contortion of the lip, and an unnatural fire in her eye, which showed too plainly that her bodily and mental powers had nearly sunk, beneath an accumulation of misery.
‘There has been violence here,’ said the surgeon, preserving his searching glance.
‘There has!’ replied the woman.
‘This man has been murdered.’
‘That I call God to witness he has,’ said the woman, passionately; ‘pitilessly, inhumanly murdered!’
‘By whom?’ said the surgeon, seizing the woman by the arm.