There was a silence. Then at length:
"No," said Lloyd quietly. "I don't want any sherry. I don't want any supper. I came down to tell you that you are all wrong in thinking I did what I could with my typhoid case at Medford. You think I left only after the patient had died. I did not; I left before. There was a crisis of some kind. I don't know what it was, because I was not in the sick-room at the time, and I did not go when I was called. The doctor was not there either; he had gone out and left the case in my charge. There was nobody with the patient but a servant. The servant called me, but I did not go. Instead I came away and left the house. The patient died that same day. It is that that I wanted to tell you. Do you all understand—perfectly? I left my patient at the moment of a crisis, and with no one with him but a servant. And he died that same afternoon."
Then she went out, and the closing of the door jarred sharply upon the great silence that had spread throughout the room.
Lloyd went back to her room, closed and locked the door, and, sinking down upon the floor by the couch, bowed her head upon her folded arms. But she was in no mood for weeping, and her eyes were dry. She was conscious chiefly that she had taken an irrevocable step, that her head had begun to ache. There was no exhilaration in her mind now; she did not feel any of the satisfaction of attainment after struggle, of triumph after victory. More than once she even questioned herself if, after all, her confession had been necessary. But now she was weary unto death of the whole wretched business. Now she only knew that her head was aching fiercely; she did not care either to look into the past or forward into the future. The present occupied her; for the present her head was aching.
But before Lloyd went to bed that night Miss Bergyn knew the whole truth as to what had happened at Dr. Pitts's house. The superintendent nurse had followed Lloyd to her room almost immediately, and would not be denied. She knew very well that Lloyd Searight had never left a dying patient of her own volition. Intuitively she guessed at something hidden.
"Lloyd," she said decisively, "don't ask me to believe that you went of your own free will. Tell me just what happened. Why did you go? Ask me to believe anything but that you—no, I won't say the word. There was some very good reason, wasn't there?"
"I—I cannot explain," Lloyd answered. "You must think what you choose. You wouldn't understand."
But, happily, when Lloyd's reticence finally broke Miss Bergyn did understand. The superintendent nurse knew Bennett only by report. But Lloyd she had known for years, and realised that if she had yielded, it had only been after the last hope had been tried. In the end Lloyd told her everything that had occurred. But, though she even admitted Bennett's affection for her, she said nothing about herself, and Miss Bergyn did not ask.
"I know, of course," said the superintendent nurse at length, "you hate to think that you were made to go; but men are stronger than women, Lloyd, and such a man as that must be stronger than most men. You were not to blame because you left the case, and you are certainly not to blame for Mr. Ferriss's death. Now I shall give it out here in the house that you had a very good reason for leaving your case, and that while we can't explain it any more particularly, I have had a talk with you and know all about it, and am perfectly satisfied. Then I shall go out to Medford and see Dr. Pitts. It would be best," she added, for Lloyd had made a gesture of feeble dissent. "He must understand perfectly, and we need not be afraid of any talk about the matter at all. What has happened has happened 'in the profession,' and I don't believe it will go any further."