The last words died away very softly. The lips that had been forming them so laboriously parted on a sudden and closed again no more. Sarah sprang to the door, opened it, and called into the passage for help; then ran back to the bedside, caught up the sheet of note-paper on which she had written from her mistress's dictation, and hid it in her bosom. The last look of Mrs. Treverton's eyes fastened sternly and reproachfully on her as she did this, and kept their expression unchanged, through the momentary distortion of the rest of the features, for one breathless moment. That moment passed, and, with the next, the shadow which goes before the presence of death stole up and shut out the light of life in one quiet instant from all the face.
The doctor, followed by the nurse and by one of the servants, entered the room; and, hurrying to the bedside, saw at a glance that the time for his attendance there had passed away forever. He spoke first to the servant who had followed him.
"Go to your master," he said, "and beg him to wait in his own room until I can come and speak to him."
Sarah still stood—without moving or speaking, or noticing any one—by the bedside.
The nurse, approaching to draw the curtains together, started at the sight of her face, and turned to the doctor.
"I think this person had better leave the room, Sir?" said the nurse, with some appearance of contempt in her tones and looks. "She seems unreasonably shocked and terrified by what has happened."
"Quite right," said the doctor. "It is best that she should withdraw.—Let me recommend you to leave us for a little while," he added, touching Sarah on the arm.
She shrank back suspiciously, raised one of her hands to the place where the letter lay hidden in her bosom, and pressed it there firmly, while she held out the other hand for a candle.
"You had better rest for a little in your own room," said the doctor, giving her a candle. "Stop, though," he continued, after a moment's reflection. "I am going to break the sad news to your master, and I may find that he is anxious to hear any last words that Mrs. Treverton may have spoken in your presence. Perhaps you had better come with me, and wait while I go into Captain Treverton's room."
"No! no!—oh, not now—not now, for God's sake!" Speaking those words in low, quick, pleading tones, and drawing back affrightedly to the door, Sarah disappeared without waiting a moment to be spoken to again.