The departing physician returned to Blaisdell’s side.
“If—er—when he regains consciousness—you might tell him that his father, Bishop Chalmers, is waiting to see him. The news might prove of benefit.”
In the hallway, too excited and interested to remain quiet in the reception room, the bishop and ex-Secretary Blaisdell paced up and down. A few minutes they had passed thus, conversing together gravely, when the click of small, dainty heels, the rustle of a woman’s skirts, were heard on the bare floor.
A tall girl, with light hair; a lovely, highbred creature, gowned in the most approved of summer “creations,” the perfume of whose presence nullified the odor of anæsthetics and antiseptics—a young lady whose features were strikingly like those of Blaisdell—the light of whose blue eyes was dimmed by weeping, threw herself, sobbing, into his arms.
“How did you get here, Bettina?” Blaisdell asked her, with something of reproof in his tone.
“I saw it—the—oh, it was too terrible!” she cried. “I asked where they had taken him, and followed directly. They said you were here.”
Her eyes rested on the bishop, standing near.
“Is it—is it so bad as that, father?” she cried, sobbing anew. “Oh, don’t tell me he is——”
She could not bring herself to say the word.