The doctor departed a few moments later. He had examined the wound on the girl’s face, and found that it was not serious. As he was going, Emma said to him:
‘Will you tell them to keep away—all the people in the house?’
‘This is your own room?’
‘I live here with my sister.’
‘I will ask them to respect your wish. The body must stay here for the present, though.’
‘Oh yes, yes, I know.’
‘Is your sister at home?’
‘She will be soon. Please tell them not to come here.’
She was alone again with the dead. It cost her great efforts of mind to convince herself that Mutimer really had breathed his last; it seemed to her but a moment since she heard him speak, heard him laugh; was not a trace of the laugh even now discernible on his countenance? How was it possible for life to vanish in this way? She constantly touched him, spoke to him. It was incredible that he should not be able to hear her.
Her love for him was immeasurable. Bitterness she had long since overcome, and she had thought that love, too, was gone with it. She had deceived herself. Her heart, incredible as it may seem, had even known a kind of hope—how else could she have borne the life which fate laid upon her?—the hope that is one with love, that asks nothing of the reason, nor yields to reason’s contumely. He had been smitten dead at the moment that she loved him dearest.