She had not heard the step on the stair. She had not seen the door open. She did not know that any one wage in the room until she heard his voice, and then she thought that she was dreaming.
“Miss Carvel!”
“Yes?” Her head did not move. He took a step toward her.
“Miss Carvel!”
Slowly she raised her face to his, unbelief and wonder in her eyes,—unbelief and wonder and fright. No; it could not be he. But when she met the quality of his look, the grave tenderness of it, she trembled, and our rendered her own to the page where his handwriting quivered and became a blur.
He never knew the effort it cost her to rise and confront him. She herself had not measured or fathomed the power which his very person exhaled. It seemed to have come upon him suddenly. He needed not to have spoken for her to have felt that. What it was she could not tell. She knew alone that it was nigh irresistible, and she grasped the back of the chair as though material support might sustain her.
“Is he—dead?”
She was breathing hard.
“No,” she said. “Not—not yet, They are waiting for the end.”
“And you?” he asked in grave surprise, glancing at the door of the Judge's room.