“Oh no, no; I am sure he will not,” Robert cried, wonderingly and pityingly. “Don't, Aunt Cynthia.”
“If he dies,” she said—“if he dies—and he has loved me all this time, and I have never done anything for him—I cannot bear it; I will not bear it; I will not, Robert!”
“Oh, he isn't going to die, Aunt Cynthia.”
“I want to go to him,” she said. “I will go to him.”
Robert looked helplessly from her to Fanny. “I am afraid you can't just now, Aunt Cynthia,” he replied.
Fanny came resolutely to his assistance. “Of course you can't, Miss Lennox,” she said. “The doctors won't let you see him now. You would do him more harm than good. You don't want to do him harm!”
“No, I don't want to do him harm,” returned Cynthia, in a wailing, hysterical voice. She threw herself down upon a sofa and began sobbing like a child, with her face hidden.
A young doctor entered and stood looking at her.
Robert turned to him. “It is my aunt, and she is agitated over Mr. Risley's accident,” he said, coloring a little.
Instantly the young physician's face lost its expression of astonishment and assumed the soothing gloss of his profession. “Oh, my dear Miss Lennox,” he said, “there is no cause for agitation, I assure you. Everything is being done for Mr. Risley.”