So saying, Rachel left the room, and gliding through passages, and down stairs, she knocked at Stanley's door. The old woman opened it.
'Ah, Dorothy! I'm so glad to see you here!' and she put a present in her hard, crumpled hand.
So, noiselessly, Rachel Lake, without more parley, stepped into the room, and closed the door. She was alone with Stanley With a beating heart, and a kind of chill stealing over her, by her brother's bed.
The room was not so dark that she could not see distinctly enough.
There lay her brother, such as he was—still her brother, on the bleak, neutral ground between life and death. His features, peaked and earthy, and that look, so new and peculiar, which does not savour of life upon them. He did not move, but his strange eyes gazed cold and earnest from their deep sockets upon her face in awful silence. Perhaps he thought he saw a phantom.
'Are you better, dear?' whispered Rachel.
His lips stirred and his throat, but he did not speak until a second effort brought utterance, and he murmured,
'Is that you, Radie?'
'Yes, dear. Are you better?'
'No. I'm shot. I shall die to-night. Is it night yet?'