Mrs Palmer begged him to telegraph at once, and the doctor’s view was that they had better wait a few hours, and—see how things went, before doing anything more.
Florella heard, as in a dream. A numb dullness was on her spirit. Constancy came and told how Rawdie had been taken upstairs, and that Godfrey thought Guy had moved and touched him.
“Poor little dog!” said Florella.
Then Constancy, with unwonted confidence, told, in hushed accents, the story of her escape at Zwei-brücken, of her sense of the finality of death, and of Guy’s words, “There is something beyond.”
“He knew it,” Constancy said, in her strong, emphatic tones.
But even this did not stir Florella’s soul; she wanted something now.
Late in the evening, Cuthbert Staunton arrived, full of anxious concern, and it fell to Florella to give him supper, and to answer his questions as to what had happened. She went through it all, in a matter-of-fact voice; but she knew that Cuthbert knew what it all implied.
There was a little silence, and then she suddenly said—
“It has been all in vain!”
Then Cuthbert leant over the corner of the table, and laid his hand on hers; she seemed to him so young and lonely in her despair.