She turned around to look at him.
He had sunk back in his chair and shrunken together. His hands lay folded on his knees, his head bowed on his chest, and his silver hair shining in the morning sunlight. His face could not possibly be whiter than it had always been since she had known him, but something else in his aspect startled and alarmed her.
She sprang up and went to him, bent over him, and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“Uncle! Uncle!” she said softly but eagerly, anxiously—“Uncle!”
“Don’t distress—yourself, dear—it is all right—bless you.”
These were his last words. His whole slight frame seemed to collapse and shrink closer together, his head sank lower, his hands slipped apart and dropped down by his sides.
When Mrs. Pole, startled by some sound, hurried to the spot, she found Palma in a panic of grief and amazement too deep for utterance, standing over the lifeless body of the good old man.
Mrs. Pole in great emergencies had but little self-possession.
She threw up her hands in horror, and then ran wildly in and out of the house, shrieking:
“Polly! Hatty! ’Sias!”