Dinah went forward.
The window was wide open, and the rush of the west wind filled the room. Isabel was lying in bed with her face to the night, wide-eyed, intent, still as death.
Noiselessly Dinah drew near. There was something in the atmosphere—a ghostly, hovering presence—that awed her. In the sound of that racing wind she seemed to hear the beat of mighty wings.
She uttered no word, she was almost afraid to speak. But when she reached the bed, when she bent and looked into Isabel's face, she caught her breath in a gasping cry. For she was shocked—shocked unutterably—by what she saw. Shrivelled as the face of one who had come through fiery tortures, ashen-grey, with eyes in which the anguish of the burnt-out flame still lingered, eyes that were dead to hope, eyes that were open only to the darkness, such was the face upon which she looked.
Biddy was by her side in a moment, speaking in a rapid whisper. "Arrah thin, Miss Dinah darlint, don't ye be scared at all! She'll speak to ye in a minute, sure. It's only that she's tired to-night. She'll be more herself like in the morning."
Dinah hung over the still figure. Biddy's whispering was as the buzzing of a fly. She heard it with the outer sense alone.
"Isabel!" she said; and again with a passionate earnestness,
"Isabel—darling—my darling—what has happened to you?"
At the sound of that pleading voice Isabel moved, seeming as it were to return slowly from afar.
"Why, Dinah dear!" she said.
Her dark eyes smiled up at her in welcome, but it was a smile that cut her to the heart with its aloofness, its total lack of gladness.