“Is it you, Jules?” she exclaimed. “Have you forgotten something?”
Monsieur Jules shut the door. “I have not forgotten anything,” he answered. “But I have heard of a sad calamity, and I have come back to prepare you, Marie, before you hear it from others.”
He spoke solemnly; he was looking solemn. His wife put down the jug of water on the table. “A calamity?” she repeated.
“Yes. You will grieve to hear it. Your friend, Miss Preen, was—was taken ill last night with the same sort of attack, but more violent; and she——”
“Oh, Jules, don’t tell me, don’t tell me!” cried Mary Carimon, lifting her hands to ward off the words with a too sure prevision of what they were going to be.
“But, my dear, you must be told sooner or later,” remonstrated he; “you cannot go through even this morning without hearing it from one person or another. Flore’s boy was my informant. In spite of all that could be done by those about her, poor lady—in spite of the two doctors who were called to her aid—she died.”
Madame Carimon was a great deal too much stunned for tears. She sank back in a chair with a face of stone, feeling that the room was turning upside down about her.
An hour later, when she had somewhat gathered her scattered senses together, she set off for the Petite Maison Rouge. Her way lay past the house of Monsieur Podevin; old Monsieur Dupuis was turning out of it as she went by. Madame Carimon stopped.
“Yes,” the doctor said, when a few words had passed, “it is a most desolating affair. But, as madame knows, when Death has laid his grasp upon a patient, medical craft loses its power to resist him.”
“Too true,” murmured Mary Carimon. “And what is it that she has died of?”