Ten o'clock! The old couple are trundled off to their separate apartments: and Miss Blessington, having bidden St. John a cold "good-night," sails, candle in hand, up the grand staircase, to that sleep that never fails to come at her calm bidding. Gerard foregoes his evening pipe, because the smoking-room does not look to the front. In painful unrest, he unfastens the shutters of one of the saloon-windows, and, raising the stiff and seldom-opened sash, leans out, looking and listening—looking at the maiden moon that rides, pale and proud, while black ruffian clouds chase each other to overtake her. Mr. Brand is out, apparently; for half-past ten has been struck, in different tones—bass and treble, deep and squeaky—by half-a-dozen different clocks, and still he has not arrived. At length, to the watcher's strained ear, comes the sound of wheels descending the steep pitch, from Blessington village; then a brougham's lamps gleam, issuing from between the rhododendron banks, and roll, like two angry eyes, to the door. In his feverish anxiety, and impatience at the long tarrying of the sleepy footman, St. John himself admits the doctor; and, following him at a little distance, as he is ushered upstairs, sits down in his own bedroom, with the door wide open, ready to pounce out upon the small Æsculapius, as he passes along the gallery at his departure, and learn his verdict.
The visit is rather a long one; to St. John, sitting still in his idle impatient misery, it seems as though the sound of Esther's opening door would never come; but never is a long day. At length the welcome sound is heard; and the young man, precipitating himself into the passage, comes face to face with a small elderly gentleman, shiveringly taking his way down the unwarmed ghostly old corridors.
"Is it a serious case?" he asks, abruptly, framing the simple words as they rise from his full heart.
Mr. Brand stares, surprised, at his questioner's blanched face. He had imagined that his patient was a little friendless orphan companion, whose life or death—save as a mere matter of compassion—were subjects of almost equal indifference to the people under whose roof she lies, panting out her young life.
"Serious? Well—oh! I assure you there is no cause for alarm, my dear sir," he says, imagining that he has got the key to the mystery; "it is nothing infectious, I assure you—nothing whatever!"
"That is not what I asked," rejoins Gerard, bluntly. "I don't care whether it is infectious or not; is it dangerous?"
"Are you any relation of the young lady, may I ask?—brother, perhaps?" inquires the little doctor, peering inquisitively, though under difficulties—for the abundant wind is playing rude tricks with the flame of his candle—into St. John's sad brown face.
"No—none."
"Well, then, to be candid with you, it does look rather serious," he answers, with the careless deliberate calmness which those whose half-life is spent in pronouncing death-warrants seem insensibly to acquire: "a sharp attack of inflammation of the lungs, brought on by neglect and exposure. By-the-by, can you inform me whether there is any predisposition to lung-disease in Miss—Miss Craven's family?"
"I know nothing about her family," replies the other, gloomily. He has no reason, beyond the probability of the thing, for supposing that she had ever had a father or mother, much less a grandfather or grandmother. Mr. Brand retires, completely mystified; and St. John, re-entering his room, throws himself into an arm-chair, and, covering his face with his hands, sends up violent voiceless prayers for the young life that is exchanging the first passes with that skilfulest of fencers, whom the nations have christened "Death!" In all his rough godless life he has had small faith in the efficacy of prayer: but, on the bare chance of there being some good in it, he prays wordlessly in his stricken heart for her.