Leo’s face turned ghastly, and she clung to her brother, while North hurriedly placed a chair, into which she sank, but only to sit up rigidly, as she stared with widely opened eyes at the doctor.
“Be calm,” he said tenderly. “You are still weak.”
“What is it?” she said, in a voice that did not sound like her own.
“It would be better that you should not know,” said North. “There has been a sad accident at the Hall.”
“I must know now,” panted Leo, as she opened and closed her hands in her excitement.
“It would be better to speak,” said the curate. “My sisters have been schooled to trouble, North. There has been a terribly sudden calamity at the Hall, Leo, dear. North was called up in the night, and—”
“Is he dead?” she whispered hoarsely; and then reading her answer in the eyes of both, she uttered a long, low, “Ah!” and sat with her hand tightening upon her brother’s, while she closed her eyes, and an agonising spasm seemed to contract her beautiful face.
“A fit of giddiness seems to have seized Sir Luke, and he fell headlong from the top of the stairs to the bottom.”
“Ah!”
Once more that strange expiration of the breath, which sounded to the listeners precisely the same, for their senses were not attuned with sufficient keenness to detect the difference.