Old Dave, coming in, observed that Miss Swendon's very lips were without color. But as she went out of the room she halted to move a screen, so as to protect Laidley from the draught.
She met her father on the stairs. "Do not go up," she said. "David is with him, and I want you to take me home." ...
Before daylight the next morning Captain Swendon was summoned by David to his master. A keen north-east wind had caused a sudden change in the weather, and Mr. Laidley had sunk rapidly, and was now scarcely conscious.
"It is only what I anticipated," said the physician, meeting the captain at the door. "Though if he had remained in the South he might have lingered until midsummer. Not longer."
The captain nursed the dying man anxiously all day, and when he was dead came home excited and haggard. It seemed to him by that time that one of the most lovable fellows in the world had gone out of it. He always was of that opinion at a funeral.
"Well, it's all over, Jane!" he cried, coming just at dusk into the room, where she stood at the window, her back turned toward him. "Yes. Poor Will! He was a good fellow years ago—witty, hospitable. You didn't know him in his prime. Your mother liked him. That is, well—" He sat down by the fire, staring at it with his owlish eyes, pulling off his old boots and soaked coat, for it was raining hard, and wondering a little that Jane had not a warm change of clothes ready for him as usual. But she did not move. "Yes," with a groan. "He knows the great secret now, poor fellow! I wish I'd been kinder to him. There's lots of things I might have done. But that damned money! I suppose it soured me."
Jane turned. "I am glad I did what was right to him," she said slowly.
The captain looked at her surprised. The shock had been too heavy on the child, he thought: her eyes were quite sunken in her white face. "Yes, yes. You were always a very nice, attentive little nurse. But when anybody dies one is apt to remember one's shortcomings to them, and wish for even an hour to set all right."
"I have done nothing to him which I would wish to set right," she said again, her lips moving with difficulty.
Her father did not answer. But she was so unused to speak of herself in any way that he observed her persistence now as peculiar.