There was the sound of a door opening softly down the hall. They all turned their eyes that way to see Frank Lamotte emerging from Evan's room. He came hurriedly toward them, and Constance noticed the nervous unsteadiness of his gait, the pinched and pallid look of his face, the feverish fire of his sunken eyes.
"Mother," he said, in a constrained voice, and without once glancing toward Constance, "I think you had better have Doctor Benoit see Evan. I have been with him all night, and am thoroughly worn out."
"What ails Evan, Frank?"
"Too much liquor," with a shrug of the shoulders. "He is on the verge of the 'brandy madness,' he sometimes sings of. He must have powerful narcotics, and no cessation of his stimulants, or we will have him raving about the house like a veritable madman; and—I have not told him about Burrill."
A look of contrition came into the mother's face. Evan had kept his room for days, but, in her anxiety for her dearest child, she had quite forgotten him.
"Come, doctor," she said, quickly; "let us go to Evan at once."
They passed on to the lower room, leaving Constance and Frank face to face.
Constance moved back a pace as if to re-enter the dressing-room; burning with anxiety as she was, to hear more concerning Clifford Heath, her womanly instincts were too true to permit her to ask information of her discarded suitor. But Frank's voice stayed her movements.
"Constance, only one moment," he said, appealingly. "Have a little patience with me now. Have a little pity for my misery."
His misery! The words sounded hypocritical; he had never loved John Burrill over much, she knew.