“I shall be just outside,” whispered the doctor. “It is better than fighting against her.”
In less than five minutes he was once more by his child’s side, trying to bring her back from the fainting fit in which she had fallen back upon the bed, for she had learned her weakness, and her utter impotence to take such a journey upon an errand like that.
And then the weary day had crept on, with the delirium sometimes seizing upon the tottering brain, and then a time of comparative coolness supervening.
Dr Luttrell looked serious, and told himself that he was in doubt.
“The bad news will kill her,” he said to himself, as he went outside to walk up and down Miss Heathery’s garden, which was fifteen feet long and twelve feet wide, “but very secluded,” as its owner often said.
There, with bare head and wrinkled brow, the doctor walked up and down, stopping, from habit, now and then to pinch off a dead leaf, or give a twist to one of the scarlet runners that had slipped from its string.
The night at last; and the doctor was sitting by the bedside, having sent Mrs Luttrell down, and then Thisbe, both utterly worn out and unhinged.
Millicent was, as Thisbe had said, dozing; but the fever was high, and Dr Luttrell shook his grey head.
“Who’d have thought, my poor flower,” he said, “that your young life would be blighted like this!”
He could hardly bear his suffering, and, rising from his chair, he stole softly into the back room, where Julia was sleeping calmly, the terrible trouble affecting her young heart only for the minute, and then passing away.