"Alas! my poor Sister!" sighed Ingoldsby.
"Alas! my poor Mistress!" sobbed Beatrice.
Sir Guy neither sighed nor sobbed;—his grief was too deep-seated for outward manifestation.
"And how long, Doctor—?" The afflicted husband could not finish the sentence.
Doctor Butts withdrew his hand from the wrist of the dying lady; he pointed to the horologe; scarcely a quarter of its sand remained in the upper moiety. Again he shook his head; the eye of the patient waxed dimmer, the rattling in the throat increased.
"What's become of Father Francis?" whimpered Beatrice.
"The last consolations of the church—" suggested Everard.
A darker shade came over the brow of Sir Guy.
"Where is the Confessor?" continued his grieving brother-in-law.
"In the pantry," cried Marion Hacket pertly, as she tripped down stairs in search of that venerable ecclesiastic;—"in the pantry, I warrant me."—The bower-woman was not wont to be in the wrong;—in the pantry was the holy man discovered,—at his devotions.