“Hush!” said the doctor, in a hurried way, as he took her hand. “Don’t be agitated. We must hope for the best, and—”
“Then he is worse,” cried Claude, breaking from him and running to her father’s side, but only to shrink back.
For the light had been shifted so that it should fall upon Gartram’s fixed, stern face, in which she read so terrible a reality that it was as if a hand of ice had clutched her heart, paralysing thought and action, so that she stood there with staring eyes and parted lips, feeling that she was in the presence of death.
Then the reaction came, and, uttering a gasp, her womanly, helpful nature came to the front.
“I am not a child,” she said in a quick, passionate voice. “Tell me; how is this? When was he taken worse? Doctor Asher, why don’t you speak to me? Tell me what I can do to help.”
He shook his head.
“I am doing everything possible, and have sent Mrs Woodham for Doctor Rixton to share the responsibility.”
Claude caught him in turn by the wrist, drew him right to the far side of the room, by the panel of the bookshelves which formed the masked door, and in a whisper, as if she were afraid that her father should hear, she said—
“Is he dead?”
“No, no—no, no, my dear Miss Gartram. It is only what I have always feared, but he would not be advised. Look, my child, look!”