The doctor spun round on him, amazed. “You? Lydia? Why in the world?”
“Perhaps I could quiet her. I have been able to quiet several delirious sick people when others couldn’t.”
“I don’t even know she’s delirious—that’s what puzzles me. She seems—”
“Will you let me try?” asked Rankin again.
When they reached the house in Bellevue, Lydia was still in a heavy stupor, so Mrs. Sandworth told them, showing no surprise at Rankin’s appearance. The two men sat down outside the door of her room to wait. It was a long hour they passed there. Rankin sat silent, holding on his knee little Ariadne, who amused herself quietly with his watch and the leather strap that held it. He took the back off, and let her see the little wheel whirring back and forth. His eyes never left the child’s serious, rosy face. Once or twice he laid his large, work-roughened hand gently on her dark hair.
Dr. Melton fidgeted about, making excursions into the sick room and downstairs to look after his business by telephone, and, when he sat by the door, relieving his overburdened heart from time to time in some sudden exclamation. “Paul hasn’t left a penny, of course,” one of these ran, “and he hadn’t finished paying for the house. But she’ll come naturally to live with Julia and me.” At these last words, in spite of his painful preoccupation, a tender look of anticipation lighted his face.
Again, he said: “What crazy notion can it be about the whatever-it-was getting Paul?” Later, “Was there ever such a characteristic death?” Finally, with a long sigh: “Poor Paul! Poor Paul! It doesn’t seem more than yesterday that he was a little boy. He was a brave little boy!”
Mrs. Sandworth came to the door. “She’s beginning to come to herself, I think. She stirs, and moves her hands about.”
As she spoke, there was a scream from the bedroom: “My baby! My baby!”