Then she went to her own room.
The clocks were chiming three, and the grey dawn lay on the walls, when she awoke to find by her bed the woman who had sat with the old lady.
“Come at once, madam; Mrs. Brand is dying.”
IV
Oliver was with them by six o’clock; he came straight up into his mother’s room to find that all was over.
The room was full of the morning light and the clean air, and a bubble of bird-music poured in from the lawn. But his wife knelt by the bed, still holding the wrinkled hands of the old woman, her face buried in her arms. The face of his mother was quieter than he had ever seen it, the lines showed only like the faintest shadows on an alabaster mask; her lips were set in a smile. He looked for a moment, waiting until the spasm that caught his throat had died again. Then he put his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“When?” he said.
Mabel lifted her face.
“Oh! Oliver,” she murmured. “It was an hour ago. ... Look at this.”