"God of heaven, Nathan Bladesden!" he said, the hoarseness of his voice changed into a wild cry. "Are you mad, or am I? You know that Eleanor Hill came back here yesterday, and you have come to take her away from me to-day?"
"I have come for that purpose, and I will do it, Doctor Philip," replied the Quaker. "Thee has my warning, and thee had better heed it. Let me see her at once, and then if she does not herself ask to be left with thee and the disgrace of thy house, thee shall see her no more, if I can prevent it, until the judgment!"
For one moment, then, without another word, Dr. Philip Pomeroy looked at the speaker steadily as his own terrible situation would permit. Then he seemed to have arrived at some solution of a great mystery, or to have sprung to a desperate resolution, for he sprang forward, grasped the Quaker so suddenly that the latter for the moment started in the expectation of personal violence, dragged him to the door separating the parlor from a smaller one at the rear, and dashed it open, with the words:
"There is Eleanor Hill! Ask her if she will go with you or remain with me!"
The room was partially shaded by heavy curtains; and Nathan Bladesden, stepping hastily therein, did not at first see what it contained. But when he did so, as he did the instant after, no wonder that even his stern, strong nature was not quite proof against the shock, and that he recoiled and uttered an exclamation of affright. For Eleanor Hill was there indeed, but scarcely within the reach of human wish or question—coffined for the grave, the glossy brown hair smoothed away from a forehead on which rested neither the furrow of pain nor the mark of shame, the sad eyes closed in that long peaceful night which knows no waking from sleep until the resurrection morning, the thin hands folded Madonna-like upon the breast, and one lingering flush of the hectic rose of consumption in the centre of either pale cheek, to restore all her childish beauty and carry the flower-symbol of human love into the very domain of death.
"That is Eleanor Hill—why do you not ask her the question?" Oh, what agony there was in that poor attempt at a taunt!
"No, thee has made her what she is—thee may keep her, now!"
The Quaker's words were a far bitterer taunt than that which had fallen from the lips of the doctor. Then he seemed to soften, went up to the coffin, looked steadily on the dead face for a moment, stooped and pressed his lips on the cold, calm brow, and said, with a strange echo of what Carlton Brand had uttered in the hospital but a few weeks before:
"They have such people as thee in heaven, Eleanor! Farewell!"
He turned away and seemed about to leave the room and the house, but the hand of Dr. Philip Pomeroy was again upon his arm, grasping it and holding him while the frame shivered with uncontrollable emotion and the broken voice groaned out: