"And you won't let me stay?"
"Won't let you? Pray tell me if young ladies like you like taking care of sick people."
"Young ladies just like me do, if brothers don't send them away."
Did he say, "Brothers ar'n't Gibraltars"? I thought so; but immediately thereafter, in that other voice, out of that other self that revolved only in a long, long period, came,--
"Will you come in?"
He had not moved one inch from the door of the room out of which he had come; but I had walked a little nearer, that my voice might not disturb the sick. The one lying dead, never more to be disturbed, where was she? Kate, the little maid, said,--
"It is in there he wants you to go."
Abraham Axtell stood aside to let me enter. There was no woman there, no one to say to me, in sweet country wise,--"I'm glad you're come,--it's very kind of you; let me take your things."
I did not wait, but threw aside my hood, the very one Sophie had lent me to go into the tower, and, taking off my shawl and furs, I laid them as quietly away in the depths of a huge sofa's corner as though they had hidden there a hundred times before.
"I think I scarcely needed this," I said, putting upon the centre-table, under the light of the lamp, Miss Nightingale's good book,--and I looked around at a library, tempting to me even, as it spread over two sides of the room.