She walked very fast, her impatience overcoming her weariness.
She showed him into the drawing-room and signed him into a seat, and sank herself down on a corner of the sofa, for she was quite out of breath.
“Now, now, Mr. Hammond,” she exclaimed, as soon as she could articulate the words. “Explain yourself! I know well, I knew from the first, that you did not come here for the sole purpose of making me a call. I feel now that the nature of your errand is painful. Tell it at once. You must know that anything is better than suspense.”
Dick attempted to answer, but looked in her face and failed. It was as hard to obey her as it would have been to gaze in the eyes of a lamb and slay it.
“Still silent?” she said, clasping her hands. “Ah, Heaven, do not torture me so! I have suffered so much already! so much, just Lord! I can bear no more! Tell me your worst news at once, and kill me with it. It would be mercy.”
Still, still, Dick’s answer, like Macbeth’s amen, “stuck in his throat.”
“Oh, Heaven, what is this? Why don’t you speak? Alick! Alick! my husband! You said that he was well! Yes, you said so! But they say of the dead that they are well!” she cried, clasping her hands, and in her excessive alarm forgetting that Dick had certainly, in the early part of their interview, spoken of Alick as a living man about to take an objectionable step.
Her complexion curdled into white and livid spots, her features quivered with the intense agony of suspense, as she stretched out her hands and gasped forth the word:
“Tell—tell—is Alick—DEAD?”
“No!” thundered Dick, emphatically, as he found his voice, “he is not! No such good luck. The rope is not ready for him yet,” he added, under his breath.