The old man laid his hand upon the speaker's shoulder. "What if the truth should be painful? Will you hear it--the whole of it?"
"I am come to hear it."
"Then I can only tell you that she is in danger; and I fear that a little time will see the end."
Very rapidly beat his pulses as he listened. Repentant pulses. A whole lifetime of repentance seemed, in that moment, to be in every one of them.
"But what is killing her? What is it?"
"The primary cause is of course that cold she caught at Guild. It laid hold of her system. Still, I think she might have rallied: many a time, since she came home, I have deemed her all but well again. You ought to know best, Master Robert, but to me it appears as though she had some grievance on her mind, and that it has been working mischief. I hope you have been a good husband to her, as Joan says to Hodge," added the doctor, turning from Mr. Lake to take a pinch of snuff. "Your wife has possessed one of those highly sensitive, rarely-refined temperaments, that, when joined to a fragile body, an unkind blow would shatter. I once told you this."
He made no comment; he was battling with his pain. Dr. Marlow continued.
"The body was a healthy body; there was no inherent disease, as I have always believed, and I cannot see why it should not have recovered; but the mind seemed to pull it back; two powers, one working against the other. Between them they have conquered, and will lay her low."
"Do you call it consumption?" Mr. Lake jerked out. And really the words were jerked out, rather than fairly spoken.
"Decidedly not. More of a decline: a waste of the system."