"Papa," said she--and the girl deserved credit for the courage with which she kept her tears back--"won't you kiss her before you go?"
It may be some instinct warned her that not in the body was he to look on the face he loved again--that those material lips were never more to touch the gentle brow which in a whole lifetime he had not seen to frown--that their next greeting, freed from earthly anxieties, released from earthly troubles, must be exchanged, at no distant period, in heaven.
He obeyed unhesitatingly, imprinting a caress on his dead wife's forehead with no kind of emotion, and so left the room, muttering vaguely certain indistinct and incoherent syllables, in which the words "Nina" and "Bargrave" were alone intelligible.
Maud saw her father to his room, and consigned him to the hands of his valet, to be put to bed without delay. Then she went to the dining-room, and forced herself to eat a crust of bread, to drink a single glass of sherry. "I shall need all my strength to-night," thought the girl, "to take care of poor papa, and arrange about the funeral and such matters as he cannot attend to--the funeral! O, mother, dear, kind mother! I wasn't half good enough to you while you were with us, and now--but I won't cry--I won't cry. There'll be time enough for all that by and by. The first thing to think of is about papa. He hasn't borne it well. Men have very little courage when they come to trial, and I fear--I fear there is something sadly wrong with him. Let me see. Three-quarters of an hour to get to Bragford--five minutes' stoppage at the turn-pike, for that stupid man is sure to have gone to bed--five minutes more for Doctor Skilton to put on his greatcoat, forty minutes for coming back--those ponies always go faster towards home. No, he can't be here under another hour. Another hour! It's a long time in a case like this. Suppose papa should have a paralytic stroke! And I haven't a notion what to do--the proper remedies, the best treatment. Women ought to know everything, and be ready for everything."
"Then there's the lawyer to-morrow. I don't suppose papa will be able to see him. I must think of all the business--all the arrangements. He can't be here till ten o'clock at the earliest, even if he starts by the first train. I shall write my directions for him in the morning. Meantime, I'll go and sit with poor papa, and see if I can't hush him off to sleep."
But when Miss Bruce reached her father's room, she found him lying in an alarming state of which she had no experience. Something between sleeping and waking, yet without the repose of the one, the consciousness of the other. So she took her place by his pillow, and watched, listening anxiously for the brougham that was to bring the doctor.
CHAPTER III
TOM RYFE
At half-past eight in the morning Mr. Bargrave's office in Gray's Inn was still empty. It had been swept, indeed, and "straightened," as he called it, by a young gentleman, whose duty it was to be in attendance at all hours from sunrise to sunset, when nobody else was in the way, and who fulfilled that duty by slipping out on such available occasions to join the youth of the quarter in sports of clamour, strength, and skill. Just now he was half-a-mile off in Holborn, running at full speed, shouting at the top of his voice, with no apparent object but that of exercising his own physical powers and the patience of the general public in his exertions. It was not, therefore, the step of this trusty guardian which fell sharp and quick on the stone stair outside the office, nor was it his hand, nor pass-key, that opened the door to admit Mr. Bargrave's nephew, assistant, and possible successor in the business, Tom Ryfe.