“She’s not asleep—she’s dead,” he said quietly.
“Dead! Not dead? Oh, don’t say she’s dead!”
Agatha Cheale’s voice rose into a kind of shriek.
The doctor put the lamp down. He took her hand and held it firmly in his.
“Hush!” he exclaimed, kindly and yet authoritatively. “I’m sorry to have given you such a shock, Miss Cheale, but I’m not so surprised as you seem to be. Her heart was in a very bad state. You have nothing to reproach yourself with—you have been wonderfully good and patient with her, poor soul.”
“Can nothing be done?”
She was looking at him with an extraordinary expression of horror and of pleading on her face.
“Nothing,” he answered gravely.
There was a pause; the doctor dropped the hand he had been holding in so firm a clasp.
“Miss Prince’s dish of strawberries killed this poor woman as surely as if she had taken a dose of poison,” he said grimly.