Miriam Ward felt that even Corbin’s presence, disagreeable as she had found the caretaker in her one interview with him upon her arrival, was preferable to the grotesque shadows made by the furniture as she hurried across the living room and up the staircase to her patient. Paul Abbott paid no attention to her as she moved about making her preparations for a long night’s vigil.
Abbott’s bedroom stretched across one wing of the house. Miss Ward was conscious of a touch of envy as she subconsciously took note of the lovely old pieces of mahogany with which the room was furnished—the highboy with its highly polished brass handles, the fine old bureau with its quaint mirror hanging above it; the antique desk in one corner and last, but not least, the carved four-post bedstead with its canopy and its long curtains. The handsome rugs on the floor deadened her footsteps as she moved about, and it was with a sense of shock that she heard the grandfather clock in the hall chime the hour of midnight. The sudden sound in the utter stillness aroused Paul Abbott as he seemed about to drop off to sleep and he lifted his head. Instantly Miss Ward was by his side, but he pushed away the glass of milk she offered him.
“Has she come?” he asked eagerly.
“She? Who?”
“Betty.”
Miss Ward shook her head. Then observing his feverish condition more closely, she hastened to say soothingly: “She will probably be here as soon as the storm lets up.”
Abbott looked at her appealingly. Thrusting his fingers inside the pocket of his pajamas he drew out a crumpled piece of paper.
“Betty wrote that she would be here to-night,” he protested. “And you must let her in—you must—”
“Surely.” Miss Ward again offered the rejected glass of milk. “Drink this,” she coaxed, and obedient to the stronger will Abbott took a few swallows and then pushed the glass away. His head slipped back upon the pillow and Miss Ward deftly arranged the curtain of the four-poster so that it sheltered his eyes from the light of the wood fire burning on the hearth at the opposite end of the bedroom.
An hour later she was about to replenish the wood for the third time when a distant peal of a door bell caused her to drop the kindling with unexpected suddenness in the center of the hot ashes. As the sparks flew upward, she heard Abbott call out and turned toward the bed.