“A fit,” he said hastily, as he took the glass from the top of the water-bottle, filled it, gulped the water down, and set bottle and glass back in their places. “A fit—yes—a fit.”
“Come with me, father, quick!” cried Claire.
“Yes. Yes, I’ll go with you—directly,” he said, fumbling for his handkerchief in the tail of the coat thrown over the chair, finding his snuff-box, and taking a great pinch.
“Come, pray come!” she cried again, as she gazed at him in a bewildered way, his trembling becoming contagious, and her lips quivering with a new dread greater than the horror at the end of the passage.
“Yes—yes,” he faltered—“I’ll come. So alarming to be woke up—like this—in the middle of the night. Shall I—shall I ring, Claire? Or will you call the maids?”
“Come with me first,” cried Claire. “It may not be too late.”
“Yes,” he cried, “it is—it is too late.”
“Father!”
“You—you said she was dead,” he cried hastily. “Yes—yes—let us go. Perhaps only a fit. Come.”
He seemed to be now as eager to go as he had been to keep back, and, holding his child’s hand tightly, he hurried with her to Lady Teigne’s apartment, where he paused on the mat to draw a long, catching breath.