“No; he would not come. He must not come,” said the old man quickly. “He is well placed, and he must not come near such pariahs as we are. No, no; don’t look like that,” he whispered passionately. “Why should he drag himself down? It is too much to ask of the boy.”
He went on tip-toe to the bed, and took the little feverish hand that lay outside the coverlid, and kissed and stroked it as he muttered to himself:
“Poor little wandering lamb! So weak and timid, and ready to go astray; but you are safe here with me. Oh, how wrong everything is!”
Claire glanced at him, half stunned by this new trouble; and, as her father talked of punishment, and the impossibility of a greater trouble than this befalling them, a cold hand seemed to clutch her heart, and a vague, black shadow of another horror came back with double force, she shuddered, and devoted herself more and more to her task of attending the sister sick apparently unto death.
As she sat there, with the shadow of death impending, after the first shock, it seemed to lose its terrors, and she found herself looking upon it as less dreadful than she had been wont to do. There was rest in it, and a cessation from the pain and suffering that had so long been her portion; and, as the hours rolled on, her throbbing brain grew dull and heavy, her own suffering lighter, and she seemed better able to attend to the sufferer at her side.
Towards noon there was a soft knock at the front door, and Isaac—who had been planning with Eliza an immediate flight from the grief-stricken house, on the ground that, even if they lost their wages, it was no longer a place for them to stay at—opened it, and told the visitor that Miss Denville could see no one.
“But me, young man,” said the caller, quietly entering. “You need not say I’m here. I shall go up soon, and you have got to go on to my house for another basket like this, only bigger.”
She patted the one she carried—one which she had crammed with such things as she thought would be useful at such a time.
Isaac gave way, allowed Mrs Barclay to go up to the drawing-room, and directly after called Eliza into his pantry to tell her that his mind was made up, and that they must go at once.
Mrs Barclay did not hesitate for a moment, but went softly up to the bedroom, tapped gently, and turned the handle to enter on tip-toe.