The wretched woman opened her eyes with a start, and gazed in a frightened way at her mistress, who was standing over her, and had shaken her shoulder.
“Tell me—you were here?”
“No, my dear. He sent me to lie down in the dining-room to wait till he called me, but I did not go to sleep. I was sitting there—in the dark—thinking, when he came to me and said, ‘I want more help. Your master is worse.’”
“Oh, Sarah, Sarah!” moaned Claude, clinging to her; “tell me it is not so bad as I think. He will not die?”
The woman shuddered as she rose to her feet, and, in a curiously furtive weird way, she crossed to where Gartram lay back in his chair. Pausing once and shrinking away, but evidently overcome by the attraction, she once more advanced, battling the while with that which mastered her, and which drew her unwillingly on, till she stood close to the great easy-chair, and bent down over the form thereon.
Then, drawing herself up to her full height, she stood there erect, gazing straight before her into space, and muttering strangely to herself.
Claude gazed at her in alarm.
“Sarah,” she whispered, “Sarah! why don’t you speak? Sarah!”
There was no reply, and at last Claude laid her hand upon the woman’s arm, with the result that she turned slowly, muttering to herself the while, in a curiously absent manner, as if all the while unconscious of her mistress’s presence.
“Sarah,” whispered Claude again, as she gazed in affright at the woman’s strange, drawn face, “speak to me! I want comfort—tell me—he is not dead?”