“And what did you do there? Go to sleep?”
“Go to sleep! I—I—cried my heart out. I mean— that I said my prayers.”
“It is very kind of you to take so much interest in me,” he answered, in a half bantering voice; then, seeming to understand that she was very much in earnest, he changed the subject, asking “And what did the others do?”
“They were all in the bar-parlour; they waited there till it grew dark, and then they waited on in the dark, for they thought that presently they would be called in to see you die. At last the change came, and Dr. Childs left you to tell them when he was sure. I heard his step, and followed him. I had no business to do it, but I could not help myself. He went into the room and stood still, trying to make out who was in it, and you might have heard a pin drop. Then he spoke to your mother, and said that through the mercy of Heaven he believed that you would live.”
“Yes,” said Henry; “and what did they say then?”
“Nobody said anything, so far as I could hear; only Miss Levinger screamed and dropped on the floor in a faint.”
“Why did she do that?” asked Henry. “I suppose that they had been keeping her there without any dinner, and her nerves were upset.”
“Perhaps they were, sir,” said Joan sarcastically: “most women’s nerves would be upset when they learned that the man they were engaged to was coming back to them from the door of the dead.”
“Possibly; but I don’t exactly see how the case applies.”
Joan rose slowly, and the work upon which she had been employed fell from her hand to the floor.