The next moment the door had swung to behind them, and father and daughter stood gazing one at the other.
“Don’t, don’t,” he cried, in a low, angry voice, as he turned from her. “Don’t look at me like that, Claire. What—what do you want me to do?”
Claire turned her eyes from him to gaze straight before her in a curiously dazed manner; and then, without a word, she crossed to the bedside and drew back the curtain, fixing her father with her eyes once more.
“Look!” she said, in a harsh whisper; “quick! See whether we are in time.”
The old man uttered a curious supplicating cry, as if in remonstrance against the command that forced him to act, and, as if in his sleep, and with his eyes fixed upon those of his child, he walked up close to the bed, bent over it a moment, and then with a shudder he snatched the curtain from Claire’s hand, and thrust it down.
“Dead!” he said, with a gasp. “Dead!”
There was an awful silence in the room for a few moments, during which the ticking of the little clock on the table beyond the bed sounded painfully loud, and the beat of the waves amid the shingle rose into a loud roar.
“Father, she has been—”
“Hush!” he half shrieked, “don’t say so. Oh, my child, my child!”
Claire trembled, and it was as though a mutual attraction drew them to gaze fixedly the one at the other, in spite of every effort to tear their eyes away.