“I don’t want to sleep,” said the child. “I want to give you a message, but it hasn’t come yet. And if I go to sleep, I shall forget it.”
“We will give her something to make her sleep presently,” said Dolly gently. “She isn’t in any pain—only a little tired. Take this chair, Miss Thorold! You must be tired too.”
So Frances sat down beside the bed to wait, as all in that house were waiting, for the coming of the Angel of Death.
CHAPTER V
THE EXILE
Late in the afternoon Maggie came in, her plump, rosy face drawn and sad. She came and hung over the bed for a space in silence. Ruth was lying as she had lain throughout, with her eyes fixed upwards, as though waiting for a sign, and still they burned with that fire of inner sight which to Frances had been somehow terrible. Maggie straightened herself at last with a deep sigh. She looked across at Frances with the glimmer of a welcoming smile, but she did not speak. Softly she crept away.
The next to come was the white-haired mother, and to her Ruth spoke the moment she entered the room though her entrance made no sound.
“My dear Granny!” she said.
Frances rose quickly and proffered her chair; but Mrs. Dermot shook her head.
“No, no! I have only come for a moment.” She bent over the child. “Are you happier now, my baby? Can you go to sleep?”
“Yes, I am quite happy,” said little Ruth, “now that Miss Thorold is here. But I can’t go to sleep till I get the message for her. I might die, dear Granny, and I shouldn’t be able to give it her then. We can only send our love—after we are dead.”