Part 23 (2/2)

”Hark!” said Ethel. ”Mamma is calling.”

Lady Sarah had been calling to Mr. G.o.dolphin. Thinking she was not heard, she now came downstairs and entered the room, wringing her hands; her eyes were overflowing, her sharp thin nose was redder than usual.

”Oh dear! I don't know what we shall do with her!” she uttered. ”She is so ill, and it makes her so fretful. Mr. G.o.dolphin, nothing will satisfy her now but she must see you.”

”See me!” repeated he.

”She will, she says. I told her you were departing for Scotland, and she burst out crying, and said if she were to die she should never see you again. Do you mind going in? You are not afraid?”

”No, I am not afraid,” said Thomas G.o.dolphin. ”Infection cannot have remained all this time. And if it had, I should not fear it.”

Lady Sarah Grame led the way upstairs. Thomas followed her. Ethel stole in afterwards. Sarah Anne lay in bed, her thin face, drawn and white, raised upon the pillow; her hollow eyes were strained forward with a fixed look. Ill as he had been led to suppose her, he was scarcely prepared to see her like this; and it shocked him. A cadaverous face, looking ripe for the tomb.

”Why have you never come to see me?” she asked in her hollow voice, as he approached and leaned over her. ”You'd never have come till I died.

You only care for Ethel.”

”I would have come to see you had I known you wished it,” he answered.

”But you do not look strong enough to receive visitors.”

”They might cure me, if they would,” she continued, panting for breath.

”I want to go away somewhere, and that Snow won't let me. If it were Ethel, he would take care to cure _her_.”

”He will let you go as soon as you are equal to it, I am sure,” said Thomas G.o.dolphin.

”Why should the fever have come to me at all?--Why couldn't it have gone to Ethel instead? She's strong. She would have got well in no time. It's not fair----”

”My dear child, my dear, dear child, you must not excite yourself,”

implored Lady Sarah, abruptly interrupting her.

”I shall speak,” cried Sarah Anne, with a touch, feeble though it was, of her old peevish vehemence. ”n.o.body's thought of but Ethel. If you had had your way,” looking hard at Mr. G.o.dolphin, ”she wouldn't have been allowed to come near me; no, not if I had died.”

Her mood changed to tears. Lady Sarah whispered to him to leave the room: it would not do, this excitement. Thomas wondered why he had been brought to it. ”I will come and see you again when you are better,” he soothingly whispered.

”No you won't,” sobbed Sarah Anne. ”You are going to Scotland, and I shall be dead when you come back. I don't want to die. Why do they frighten me with their prayers? Good-bye, Thomas G.o.dolphin.”

The last words were called after him; when he had taken his leave of her and was quitting the room. Lady Sarah attended him to the threshold: her eyes full, her hands lifted. ”You may see that there's no hope of her!”

she wailed.

Thomas did not think there was the slightest hope. To his eye--though it was not so practised an eye in sickness as Mr. Snow's, or even as that of the Rector of All Souls'--it appeared that in a very few days, perhaps hours, hope for Sarah Anne Grame would be over for ever.

Ethel waited for him in the hall, and was leading the way back to the drawing-room; but he told her he could not stay longer, and opened the front door. She ran past him into the garden, putting her hand into his as he came out.

”I wish you were not going away,” she sadly said, her spirits, that night very unequal, causing her to see things with a gloomy eye.

”I wish you were going with me!” replied Thomas G.o.dolphin. ”Do not weep, Ethel. I shall soon be back again.”

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