Dart saw Miss Montaubyn step back into her room. He turned involuntarily to look at her.
She stood still a second—so still that it seemed as if she was not drawing mortal breath. Her astonishing, expectant eyes closed themselves, and yet in closing spoke expectancy still.
"Speak, Lord," she said softly, but as if she spoke to Something whose nearness to her was such that her hand might have touched it. "Speak, Lord, thy servant 'eareth."
Antony Dart almost felt his hair rise. He quaked as she came near, her poor clothes brushing against him. He drew back to let her pass first, and followed her leading.
The court was filled with men, women, and children, who surged about the doorway, talking, crying, and protesting against each other's crowding. Dart caught a glimpse of a policeman fighting his way through with a doctor. A dishevelled woman with a child at her dirty, bare breast had got in and was talking loudly.
"Just outside the court it was," she proclaimed, "an' I saw it. If she'd bin 'erself it couldn't 'ave 'appened. 'No time for 'osspitles,' ses I. She's not twenty breaths to dror; let 'er die in 'er own bed, pore thing!" And both she and her baby breaking into wails at one and the same time, other women, some hysteric, some maudlin with gin, joined them in a terrified outburst.
"Get out, you women," commanded the doctor, who had forced his way across the threshold. "Send them away, officer," to the policeman.
There were others to turn out of the room itself, which was crowded with morbid or terrified creatures, all making for confusion. Glad had seized the child and was forcing her way out into such air as there was outside.
The bed—a strange and loathly thing—stood by the empty, rusty fireplace. Drunken Bet lay on it, a bundle of clothing over which the doctor bent for but a few minutes before he turned away.
Antony Dart, standing near the door, heard Miss Montaubyn speak to him in a whisper.