"Good-bye!" she said. "Good-bye, father!"
When Mr. Van Ness and the clergyman entered the room later, they found Betty there, her lean visage half terrified and half defiant.
"Where is my wife?" said Van Ness with the sad authority becoming the master of this house of mourning.
"She—she begs that she may not be disturbed until to-morrow," said Betty with a scared look behind her. "She's ill. The fact is, she's clean worn out with trouble."
"I can readily conceive that," said Mr. Lampret.
But Van Ness said nothing: he only glanced toward the still figure which lay upon the sofa covered with a white sheet, and turned away with a gloom and alarm on his benignant face quite new to it.
A couple of hours afterward, being alone, he met Betty coming out of Jane's apartment, and stopped her sternly:
"Mrs. Nichols, I must see my wife. If she is ill, my place is beside her."
For her answer Betty, with a gasp, threw open the door.