His words were cut short by a piercing shriek that rang like the cry of a lost soul through the air. He started up and confronted Drusilla.
She was standing before him, in motionless, speechless anguish. Her face was blanched to the hue of death, her eyes were dilated and strained, her hands were extended, her form rigid. As one struck with catalepsy, for a moment she stood thus, and then fell.
Hammond caught her before she struck the floor, and laid her tenderly on the sofa, and then in great alarm, he rang for assistance.
Her servants were at that hour gathered around the kitchen table eating their dinner, and talking of the strange visitor whom they had all seen enter the house in company with their mistress. They heard the shriek that rang through the air, followed by the loud peals of the parlor-bell, and they started up in a body and ran to see what the matter could be.
They found their mistress in a swoon on the sofa, and a strange gentleman standing over her, beside himself with fear and grief.
“For Heaven’s sake do something. I fear Mrs. Lyon is dying or dead!” he exclaimed.
“What caused it, sir?” demanded “mammy,” putting aside the intruder, and kneeling down to examine her patient.
“I was so unhappy as to be the bearer of bad news to her,” Dick confessed.
“Then, sir, you ought to a-knowed better than for to a-told it to her in her state of health. It may a-killed her,” said the nurse severely, as is the custom of her class in rebuking the common enemy.
Dick looked guilty and wretched.