Rose came in to say that Bessie and the other servants had seen nothing of Uncle Meshach, and that they were all three getting up, and then she disappeared into the kitchen.  Ethel and Milly departed, a little scared, a little regretful, but inspirited by the dreadful charm and fascination of the whole inexplicable adventure.

‘Aunt Hannah’s had another attack, depend on it,’ said John, ’that’s it.’

‘I hope not,’ Leonora murmured perfunctorily.  Now that she had broken the spell of futile inactivity which the discovery of Uncle Meshach’s body seemed for a few dire moments to have laid upon them, she was more at ease.

’I fancy you’d better go down there yourself as soon as the doctor’s been,’ John continued.  ’You’re perhaps more likely to be useful there than here.  What do you think?’

She looked at him under her eyelids, saying nothing, and reading all his mind.  He had obstinately determined that Uncle Meshach was dead, and he was striving to conceal both his satisfaction on that account and his rapidly growing anxiety as to the condition of Aunt Hannah.  His terrible lack of frankness, that instinct for the devious and the underhand which governed his entire existence, struck her afresh and seemed to devastate her heart.  She felt that she could have tolerated in her husband any vice with less effort than that one vice which was specially his, that vice so contemptible and odious, so destructive of every noble and generous sentiment.  Her silent, measured indignation fed itself on almost nothing—­on a mere word, a mere inflection of his voice, a single transient gleam of his guilty eye.  And though she was right by unerring intuition, John, could he have seen into her soul, might have been excused for demanding, ’What have I said, what have I done, to deserve this scorn?’

Rose returned, bearing materials for a fire; she had changed her Liberty dress for the dark severe frock of her studious hours, and she had an irritating air of being perfectly equal to the occasion.  John, having thrown off his ulster, endeavoured to assist her in lighting the fire, but she at once proved to him that his incapacity was a hindrance to her; whereupon he wondered what in the name of goodness Carpenter and the doctor were doing to be so long.  Leonora began to tidy the room, which bore witness to the regardless frenzy of anticipation with which its occupants had cast aside the soiled commonplaces of life six hours before.

‘But look!’ Rose cried suddenly, examining Uncle Meshach anew, after the fire was lighted.

‘What?’ John and Leonora demanded together, rushing to the bed.

‘His lips weren’t like that!’ the girl asserted with eagerness.

All three gazed long at the impassive face.

‘Of course they were,’ said John, coldly discouraging.  Leonora made no remark.

The unblinking eyes of Uncle Meshach continued to stare upwards and outwards, indifferently, interested in the ceiling.  Outside could be heard the creaking of stairs, and the affrighted whisper of the maids as they descended in deshabille from their attics at the bidding of this unconscious, cynical, and sardonic enigma on the bed.