She went out into the passage.
XXXIX
Isaacson glanced at Doctor Hartley before he followed her.
"I—doesn't she look strange? Did you ever see such an alteration?" almost whispered the young man.
Isaacson did not answer, but stepped into the passage.
Mrs. Armine was a little way down it, walking on rather quickly. Suddenly she looked round. Light shone upon her from above, and showed her tense and worn face, her features oddly sharpened and pointed, wrinkles clustering about the corners of her eyes. She seemed, under the low roof, unnaturally tall in her flowing grey robe, and this evening in her height there seemed to Isaacson to be something forbidding and almost dreadful. She held up one hand, as if warning the two men to pause for a moment. Then she went on, and disappeared through the doorway that faced them beyond the two rows of bedrooms.
"We are to wait, it seems," Isaacson said, stopping in the passage. "The patient is up then?"
"He wasn't when I left," murmured Hartley.
"Did you say whether he was to be kept in bed?"