He came slowly across the hall, and bowed his head gravely as he entered, looking from one to the other, as if waiting to be interrogated, but no one spoke; and as the door swung to, the light of another day came stealing though the windows, and between the half-drawn blinds in a curious ghastly way, making everything look unreal, and the candles lit upon the table burn with a sickly glare.
Claude made an effort to speak twice, but the words failed upon her lips. She felt that she must rush by this strange, solemn-looking man, and seek the information she wanted in her father’s room, but her limbs refused to act, and she stood holding on by the back of a chair, while the new doctor now fixed his eyes on Sarah Woodham, who stood there wild-looking and motionless, her eyes appearing to burn.
“I grieve to say,” said the new doctor at last, and then he turned, for the woman’s eyes glared at him so fiercely that he ceased, paralysed.
“Well,” she said harshly, “Why do you not speak?”
“Doctor Asher has given me a history of the case,” he said, with an effort. “It is a most regretful incident. No one to blame. Perhaps Doctor Asher might have—but no—I should probably, under the circumstances, have been guilty of the same error.”
He paused in his low, faltering delivery, for Sarah Woodham had taken a step toward him, bending forward, and fascinating him with her wild, dark eyes.
Then, after a painful interval, as a low, querulous wail arose from outside, followed by what sounded like a fiendish chorus of chattering laughter from the rocks below, where a flock of gulls were quarrelling over some refuse cast up by the sea, the doctor continued—
“We have done everything possible under the circumstances, but the case was beyond our power. Ladies, this is a most painful communication for me to have to make. Doctor Asher—completely prostrated by grief. His most prominent patient, and—”
Claude stretched out one hand blindly fur that of her cousin, and took a step toward the door, but, as they reached it, Mary uttered a low cry and shrank back, withdrawing her hand.
Claude did not notice the action, but went slowly out of the room, as one goes deliberately on when walking in sleep.