“Who is with Nancy?”
“Dolly Kendal—good girl! Alfred went and fetched one of them, and she is going to spend the night with her.”
“Mrs. Harter? Does she know?”
“She hasn’t spoken, but they say she’s been conscious the whole time.”
“Mother, come,” said Sallie, and they went upstairs together, Sallie holding her mother’s hand as I had never seen her do since she was a tiny child.
Poor Claire cried and asked incessant questions, to which she herself supplied most of the answers, and walked up and down, and threw herself backward and forward in a deep armchair, and finally turned absolutely faint from sheer nervous exhaustion.
Her maid got her upstairs and into bed at last.
There was nothing left of the night, but a ghastly interval of waiting, and silence, and realization, followed.
I had seen Bill Patch—unrecognizable—for one instant only....
And I had seen old Carey, my neighbor for years, crushed and broken, to all intents and purposes dead....