"We took him from the hotel this morning to St. John's Hospital. We thought he would be just as well off there--even better off. Dr. Hobart thought he was nearly well anyway. But the ride and the effort of listening to Hobart's explanations apparently fatigued him. By the time they got to the hospital he was very sick again. His bronchitis--if it ever was bronchitis--turned into pneumonia--double acute pneumonia. He got worse and worse all day. Dr. Hobart and the physicians and nurses at the hospital did everything possible for him. But it was no use. He died at nine o'clock."
All eyes turned suddenly to Aunt Mary, who had risen, holding on to the back of her chair.
Father Murray was at her side in an instant, and Alicia hurried to her.
"No," said Aunt Mary, brokenly, "I'm not going--to faint--or anything. But I want--to be alone."
Rockwell sprang to his feet. "My bedroom," he said, and led the way to the door of his chamber, which opened off the sitting room.
In a moment Aunt Mary, walking between Father Murray and Alicia, had passed into the bedroom.
Mr. Wayward's voice broke the stillness.
"Poor fellow!" he said.
For a minute or two they all paid the tribute of silence to the dead. But it was impossible to be really very sorry for George Norman. He had had an easy, pleasure-filled life--wealth, luxury, fame, and a good time, according to his own conception of a good time, up to the very beginning of his brief illness. That his last few, largely unconscious hours had been passed in a hospital away from his friends had certainly been almost no grief to him. The only sorrow genuinely possible was over the common folly, and the universal final tragedy, of humankind. In a few moments the thoughts of the entire group that remained in Rockwell's sitting room were irresistibly drawn back to the strange and somewhat dangerous situation in which the unexpected death had left them.
Presently Rockwell spoke: