Marcy was in attendance.
“This is all quite right. Now do you wait here until I bring the General in, and then you can serve tea,” said Drusilla, as with her baby in her arms she passed out into the hall and on towards General Lyon’s study.
She opened the door.
The little room was dark and chill, but the lights from the hall shone in, and revealed to her the form of the old man, seated at the writing table, with his arms folded on it, and his head bowed down upon them. It was an attitude of depression, of sleep or of death.
Of death! a dread pang seized her heart, and held her spell-bound in the doorway as she gazed on him. He had not heard her approach. He was not disturbed by the inflow of light. He remained, indeed, as still as death!
She was afraid to stir, almost to breathe! She had heard of old men dying just so! Oh, had not his own brother, his youngest brother, died that way not three years since?—died sitting in his chair by his Christmas fire, surrounded by his whole family and friends? died with nothing on earth to provoke death? died from no excitement, no grief, no disease apparently?
And here was the elder brother, a man of like constitution, who had been severely tried this day by the parting from his beloved and only surviving child, and now had come away to this chill, dark room, and had sat in solitude for an hour or more!
Drusilla’s conscience smote her terribly for what she called the false and fatal delicacy that had prevented her from following him immediately to his retreat.
Oh! if he should be dead, dead alone in this bleak room, she would never forgive herself, though she had done all for the best.
All these thoughts and feelings flashed like lightning through her brain and heart in the moment that she stood panic-stricken in the door.