The unhappy tidings were made known to the household--that their mistress could not yet be aroused from the effect of the chloroform which had been administered with a view of saving her pain; and they came flocking in. She was not dead; but she was lying still and motionless: and the means for recalling life went on. Mark Cray continued his efforts when all hope was gone, trying every means, probable and improbable, in his madness. Had a battery been at hand he would have essayed galvanism.
Alas! they might as well have sought to arouse a stone statue. Never more would there be any arousing for poor Lady Oswald in this world. Death was claiming her: uncompromising, not-to-be-denied death!
Parkins, considerably recovered from her own attack, but in a shaky and tearful state, had come into the room with the rest. Parkins seemed inclined to rebel at the state of things; to question everybody, to cast blame somewhere.
"Why should chloroform have been given to her!" she asked of Mr. Cray.
"It was given with a view to deaden the pain," was Mark's short answer.
"But, sir, the operation was all but begun, if not begun, when I--when I---fainted: and there had been no question then of giving her chloroform."
"No, and it was your fainting that did three parts of the mischief," savagely returned Mr. Cray, who felt it the greatest relief to be able to lay the blame upon somebody. "It put her into a most undesirable state of agitation. I should think you must have heard her shriek, in spite of your fainting-fit."
The words, the angry tone, completely did for Parkins, and she subsided into tears again. A few minutes, and Dr. Davenal turned from the ill-fated lady to her servants standing there.
"It is all over. She is gone."
And the doctor looked at his watch, and found that only one poor hour had elapsed since he had entered the house to perform that operation which had altogether terminated so fatally.