The bailiff appeared on the staircase.
"Where is the doctor?"
"He was not at home," the man made answer.
"Did you not ask where he was and go after him?" Minna asked, impatiently.
"No," replied the bailiff, twirling his straw hat in his hands. "But I left word for him to come as soon as he got home."
"Fool!" Strachinsky, who had now come into the corridor, exclaimed, shaking his fist at the man. "You are dismissed," he added, grandiloquently. Then, turning to Minna, he said, "Good heavens, if I had a horse I could ride to K----."
Without heeding him, Minna hurried down the staircase, and a few moments later a carriage again left the court-yard.
Minna had herself gone for the doctor, before her departure beseeching Erika to keep quiet: she should be summoned as soon as it would be right for her to see her mother.
The girl obeyed, and sat in her room, rigid and motionless, at the table where the candle was burning down into the socket. At first, to shorten the time, she tried to knit, but the needles dropped from her fingers.
Miss Sophy sat opposite her, with elbows upon the table, and her head in her hands, listening.