Presently Aunt Hester opened her eyes, and they rested on the vacant pillow at her side. After a pause she slowly turned her head, and fixed her gaze upon the doctor's face. He thought that the power of speech had left her, but suddenly she spoke, quite clearly.
“Where is my sister Judith?” she asked.
There are times when the truth must be spoken, though it kill.
“Your sister died yesterday,” replied the doctor.
Aunt Hester lay quite still, staring at the ceiling. Her shrivelled fingers were picking at the counter-pane. Then a gleam of intelligence passed across her face.
“And now,” she said, “I shall have a bed to myself. I have waited long enough.”
Aunt Hester was very human, although the shadow of an angel's wing lay across her bed.
It was many years later that Christian Vellacott found himself in the presence of the Angel of Death again. A telegram from Havre was one day handed to him in the room at the back of the tall house in the Strand, and the result was that he crossed from Southampton to Havre that same night.
As the sun rose over the sea the next morning, its earliest rays glanced gaily through the open port-hole of a cabin in a large ocean steamer, still panting from her struggle through tepid Eastern seas.