"It is possible," she was beginning; but pausing at the sight of Ormiston, who had by this time joined himself to the group around her bed, she added in an apprehensive tone, "but there is a stranger present."
"Not a stranger, but a friend," the young officer replied, in a tone of sincerity it would have been impossible to doubt, even if Nellie had not whispered, "A friend, indeed! Without him we could hardly have been with you now."
"Then I will trust him as a friend," Mrs. Netterville replied. "The gentleman who left me as you entered—"
"The doctor," Ormiston interrupted, with a marked emphasis on the word.
"Well, the doctor," she replied, with a languid smile. "He can do all I need, and he lives close at hand, with the merchant William Lyon, who knows him not, however," she added, mindful of the safety of the person named—"who knows him not in any other character than that of a lodger and chance sojourner in the city."
"In ten minutes he shall be here," said Ormiston, "if I can induce him to come with me. Meanwhile I will give orders to the jailer to leave you undisturbed."
"If you permit it, Major Ormiston, I will go with you," said Roger, not only zealous for the success of the embassy, but anxious, likewise, that before taking such a decided step Nellie should have the opportunity of a private conference with her mother. "I think my name, and a word which I can whisper in his ear, may be of use—otherwise he might fear a snare."
Ormiston assenting to this proposition, the young men departed, and for the first time since the commencement of their interview mother and daughter were alone together.
For some minutes, however, neither of them spoke. Mrs. Netterville lay back, endeavoring to recover breath and strength for the coming scene, and Nellie was completely stunned. The shock of finding her mother dying at the very moment when she had hoped to restore her to new life—the bodily weariness consequent on her journey—the sudden, and, to her, the most inexplicable resolution to which Mrs. Netterville had come in her regard—all combined to paralyze her faculties, and, hardly able to think or even feel, she sat like a statue on the floor beside her mother.
From this state of stupor she was roused at last by the sound of the dying woman's voice: