I did not wait for his coming back. I went to my room and stayed there. I don't know if he looked for me at our table in the window next morning, for I did not go to the coffee-room for breakfast. And by eleven o'clock I was sitting in the ladies' drawing-room—empty as Sahara at that hour—with my hotel bill in my hand, wondering how it was possible that such a little, little holiday should have cost so very much.
Then he came into the room. He sat down opposite to me at the round table, and I saw that he had a telegram in his hand.
"I have bad news for you," he said. "Your twin sister is dead."
"Oh!" I breathed. What could I do but sit there turning red and white, and looking like a fool before him?
"It is a sad and curious coincidence that my twin brother expired at the same instant. What is there for us to do but to console each other?"
He reached out a hand, palm upwards, to me across the table. "You will find life pleasanter as a doctor's wife than as a doctor," he said. "And——"
But I have told you enough till next mail, Berthalina. By that time, perhaps, you will have prepared yourself for the rest of what he said to me, and what I answered.
I wonder if you will think I have been a sensible and self-restrained woman all my life to act like a rash, precipitate fool in the finish?
I wonder!