"How is he, dear Miss Baynard?" were Mrs. Bullivant's first words. She spoke in hushed tones, although as yet she had got no farther than the entrance-hall.
"He is sinking fast, and is almost speechless."
"You shock me more than I can say." And, to do her justice, for the moment she looked shocked. To herself she said, "If he is speechless, or nearly so, it is too late for him to think of altering his will, and, if he has done so already, I have come too late to help it." Aloud she went on: "I had not the faintest idea that his illness had assumed the gravity you tell me it has--news percolates to us so slowly at Uplands--otherwise I should have been here before now. But now that I am here, dear Miss Baynard, you must let me stay with you till the end. Mr. Cortelyon, as you are probably aware, regarded me with a very special affection. Had circumstances turned out differently, I should have been his daughter-in-law. But my life has been one long disappointment."
Knowing what she did of the purport of her uncle's will, Nell felt that, little as she liked the woman, she was not in a position to object to her presence in the house. In a very little while Mrs. Bullivant would be mistress of Stanbrook and of everything in it, while she, Nell, would be little better than an outcast. But however bitter and humiliating it might be to know this, she had other things to think of just now.
When Mrs. Bullivant and Nell entered the sick room together some minutes later, Mrs. Budd, who had been keeping watch in the interim, rose, curtsied to the newcomer, and went.
Mr. Cortelyon lay with closed eyes and with both arms extended on the coverlet; one shut hand held the coveted stater of Epaticcus, the other grasped his silver snuffbox. An involuntary exclamation escaped Mrs. Bullivant as her eyes fell on his face. Once before she had believed him to be at the point of death, and only by what might almost be termed a miracle had his life been prolonged. This time no miracle would intervene. His hours, nay, his very minutes, were numbered; Death's awful shadow was already closing round him; would he live through the night?
About half an hour later he opened his eyes, turned his head slightly and stared about him. Mrs. Bullivant rose, crossed on tiptoe to the bed and bent over him. "Dear Mr. Cortelyon, don't you know me?" she murmured. "Yes, I am sure you do."
For a second or two he peered up into her face with contracted lids, as if not quite sure about her identity. Then, with an inarticulate noise, which seemed more indicative of anger and repulsion than of anything else, he raised both his hands and pushed her rather roughly away. Mrs. Bullivant went back to her chair with a somewhat heightened color in her cheeks. "Poor dear!" she said in an undertone; "it is quite evident that he no longer knows what he is about."
And so daylight slid slowly into dark, and the two women still kept watch on either side of the bed. Dr. Banks, with a cheerful fire and a magnum of port to keep him company, sat below in the library--merely for form's sake, and because it would be an injustice to his wife, and family not to make his bill as long a one as possible while the chance was his of doing so.
For some hours the dying man's skin had been gradually changing color, till now it had become of one uniform leaden blue tint. Dr. Banks, who stepped upstairs for a couple of minutes every half-hour or so, said to himself that it must be one of the effects of "that damned drug."