“God Almighty help us! The train Mr. Vanstone traveled by to Grailsea?”
“The same. I was sent here by the up-train; the line was just cleared in time for it. They wouldn’t write—they said I must see ‘Miss Garth,’ and tell her. There are seven passengers badly hurt; and two—”
The next word failed on his lips; he raised his hand in the dead silence. With eyes that opened wide in horror, he raised his hand and pointed over Miss Garth’s shoulder.
She turned a little, and looked back.
Face to face with her, on the threshold of the study door, stood the mistress of the house. She held her old music-book clutched fast mechanically in both hands. She stood, the specter of herself. With a dreadful vacancy in her eyes, with a dreadful stillness in her voice, she repeated the man’s last words:
“Seven passengers badly hurt; and two—”
Her tortured fingers relaxed their hold; the book dropped from them; she sank forward heavily. Miss Garth caught her before she fell—caught her, and turned upon the man, with the wife’s swooning body in her arms, to hear the husband’s fate.
“The harm is done,” she said; “you may speak out. Is he wounded, or dead?”
“Dead.”