“What is it that is the matter with your master?”
“I don’t know,” was the answer: but the words were spoken in a tone which caused Janet to think that the old man was awake to the same fears that she was. “Miss Janet, I am afraid to think what it may be.”
“Is he often ill like this?”
“I know but of a time or two, ma’am. But that’s a time or two too many.”
Janet returned to the room. Thomas was leaning back in his chair, his face ghastly, his hands fallen, prostrate altogether from the effects of the agony. Things were coming into her mind one by one: how much time Thomas had spent in his own room of late; how seldom, comparatively speaking, he went to the Bank; how often he had the brougham, instead of walking, when he did go to it. Once—why, it was only this very last Sunday!—he had not gone near church all day long. Janet’s fears grew into certainties.
She took a chair, drawing it nearer to Thomas. Not speaking of her fears, but asking him in a soothing tone how he felt, and what had caused his illness. “Have you had the same pain before?” she continued.
“Several times,” he answered. “But it has been worse to-night than I have previously felt it. Janet, I fear it may be the forerunner of my call. I did not think to leave you so soon.”
Except that Janet’s face went almost as pale as his, and that her fingers entwined themselves together so tightly as to cause pain, there was no outward sign of the grief that laid hold of her heart.
“Thomas, what is the complaint that you are fearing?” she asked, after a pause. “The same that—that——”
“That my mother had,” he quietly answered, speaking the words that Janet would not speak.