As he speaks an arrow of self-reproach shoots through his heart at the thought of how near a chance the poor soul's cry for help had run of being altogether disregarded.
'I wanted to speak to you,' she says, a spark of fever brightening the chill wretchedness of her look. 'I have something to say to you; that was why I sent for you.'
'Of course, of course!' he answers soothingly. 'I was delighted to come.'
'I can't stay more than a minute,' she says restlessly. 'I must go back to him; I have never left him for eight and forty hours. He is asleep now—only under opiates—but an opiate sleep is better than none, is it not?' consulting his face with a piteous appeal.
'Much—much better,' replies Talbot earnestly.
'You have heard—they have told you—how ill he is?'
A sort of hard break makes itself heard in her voice; but she masters it impatiently.
'Yes, they have told me.'
'What have they told you?' asks she sharply. 'I daresay that they have told you a great deal more than the truth. If they have told you that there is no hope, they have told you wrong. They had no right to say so; there is hope!'
'They never told me that there was not,' replies he, still more soothingly than before; for it seems to him that no finger can be laid too gently on that terrible mother-ache.