Mr. Barnby shrugged his shoulders, to signify that it was no affair of his.
The front door was opened by Mr. Trimmer, who had hurriedly descended the stairs. Mrs. Swinton emerged from the library at the same moment, impatient to see her father. To her amazement, she beheld Dora Dundas enter. The girl carried in her hand a piece of paper. Her face was pale, her eyes were red with weeping, and her bearing generally was subdued. The message in her hand was a crumpled half-sheet of note-paper, in the miser’s own handwriting, short and dramatic in its appeal:
“Come to me. I am dying.”
“Trimmer, I must see my father at once,” cried Mrs. Swinton, without waiting to greet Dora. 316
The girl gave her one look, a frozen glance of contempt, and turned her appealing eyes to Mr. Trimmer.
“Mr. Herresford,” the valet announced, “wishes to see Miss Dundas. The doctor is with him. No one else must come up.”
“But I insist,” Mrs. Swinton cried.
“And I, too, insist,” cried Trimmer, with glittering eyes and a voice thrilling from excitement. His period of servitude was nearly ended, and he cared not a snap of his fingers for Mrs. Swinton or for anyone else. His legacy of fifty thousand dollars was almost within his grasp.
The rector’s wife fell back, too astonished to speak.
Dora followed Trimmer’s lead up the stairs, and entered the death chamber with noiseless tread. The dying man was lying propped up with pillows as usual. One side of him was already at rest forever; but his right hand, with which he had written his last letter and signed the lying statement which was to absolve his grandson, was lovingly fingering a large bundle of bank-notes that Mr. Barnby, by request, had brought up from the bank. On a chair by the bedside, account-books were spread in confusion, and one—a black book with a silver lock—was lying on the bed. The physician stood on one side, half-screened by the curtains of the bed. Herresford 317 beckoned Dora, who approached tremblingly.