"No," replied Mrs. Twining.
Claire grasped her mother's arm with both hands. "Then what is it?" she questioned. "You don't mean that—that Father's sick? Do you?"
Mrs. Twining was white as death, and had dark rings round her fine black eyes. She laughed with great bitterness as she closed the door.
"Oh, no," she said. "Your father ain't sick, Claire."
These few words teemed, somehow, with a frightful irony. Claire knew her mother's moods so well that she now staggered backward a little as the two faced each other in this narrow hallway.
"Mother," she said, with a gasp, "what do you mean? Has anything happened to Father?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Twining with a cruelty that Claire never forgot and never forgave. "Your father's dead. He died at nine o'clock. The doctor's here now. He says it's heart-disease. You're a nice gadabout, to be off for hours, nobody knows where, and come home to find" ...
Mrs. Twining ended her sentence at just this point, for Claire had dropped in a swoon before the next word could be spoken, upon the oil-cloth of the little hall which her own hands had so often swept.