"She has asked for me?"
"Yes; but," Wyndham's tone was impressive, "I warn you, she is not altogether herself. And—she is very desperately ill."
"The child?" questioned Piers.
"The child never breathed." Curt and cold came the answer. "I have had to concentrate all my energies upon saving the mother's life, and—to be open with you—I don't think I have succeeded. There is still a chance, but—" He left the sentence unfinished.
They had reached the conservatory, and, entering, it was Piers who led the way. His face, as they emerged into the library, was deathly, but he was absolute master of himself.
"I believe there is a meal in the dining-room," he said. "Will you help yourself while I go up?"
"No," said Wyndham briefly. "I am coming up with you."
He kept a hand upon Piers' arm all the way up the stairs, deliberately restraining him, curbing the fevered impetuosity that urged him with a grim insistence that would not yield an inch to any chafing for freedom.
He gave utterance to no further injunctions, but his manner was eloquent of the urgent need for self-repression. When Piers entered his wife's room, that room which he had not entered since the night of Ina's wedding, his tread was catlike in its caution, and all the eagerness was gone from his face.
Then only did the doctor's hand fall from him, so that he advanced alone.