“He did not realize it to suffer much?” she said.
“No, Mrs. Lloyd,” replied Dr. Story, quickly. “No, I assure you that he suffered very little.”
“He seemed very happy when he died, Aunt Lizzie,” said Robert, huskily.
Mrs. Lloyd looked away from them all around the room. It was a magnificent apartment. Norman Lloyd had had an artistic taste as well as wealth. The furnishings had always been rather beyond Mrs. Lloyd's appreciation, but she admired them kindly. She took in every detail; the foam of rich curtains at the great windows, the cut-glass and silver on the dressing-table, the pale softness of a polar-bear skin beside the bed, the lifelike insistence of the costly pictures on the walls.
“He's gone where it is a great deal more beautiful,” she said to them, like a child. “He's gone where there's better treasures than these which he had here.”
They all looked at her in amazement. It actually seemed as if, for the moment, the woman's sole grief was over the loss to her husband of those things which he had on earth—the treasures of his mortal state.
Robert took hold of his aunt's arm and led her, quite unresisting, from the room, and as she went she felt for Ellen's hand. “It is time she was home,” she said to Robert. “Her folks will be worried about her. She's been a real comfort to me.”
It was the first time that Ellen had ever seen death, that she had ever seen the living confronted with it. She felt as if a wave were breaking over her own head as she clung fast to Mrs. Lloyd's hand.
“Sha'n't I stay?” she whispered, pitifully, to her. “If I can send word to my mother—”
“No, you dear child,” replied Mrs. Lloyd, “you've done enough, and you will have to be up early in the morning.” Then she checked herself. “I forgot,” said she to Robert; “the factory will be closed till after the funeral, won't it?”