No Name eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 995 pages of information about No Name.

No Name eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 995 pages of information about No Name.

Miss Garth answered him: 

“No better; if there is any change, it is a change for the worse.”

They spoke those words at the window of the morning-room which opened on the garden.  Mr. Clare paused, after hearing the reply to his inquiry, stepped out on to the walk, then turned on a sudden, and spoke again: 

“Has the doctor given her up?” he asked.

“He has not concealed from us that she is in danger.  We can only pray for her.”

The old man laid his hand on Miss Garth’s arm as she answered him, and looked her attentively in the face.

“You believe in prayer?” he said.

Miss Garth drew sorrowfully back from him.

“You might have spared me that question sir, at such a time as this.”

He took no notice of her answer; his eyes were still fastened on her face.

“Pray!” he said.  “Pray as you never prayed before, for the preservation of Mrs. Vanstone’s life.”

He left her.  His voice and manner implied some unutterable dread of the future, which his words had not confessed.  Miss Garth followed him into the garden, and called to him.  He heard her, but he never turned back:  he quickened his pace, as if he desired to avoid her.  She watched him across the lawn in the warm summer moonlight.  She saw his white, withered hands, saw them suddenly against the black background of the shrubbery, raised and wrung above his head.  They dropped—­the trees shrouded him in darkness—­he was gone.

Miss Garth went back to the suffering woman, with the burden on her mind of one anxiety more.

It was then past eleven o’clock.  Some little time had elapsed since she had seen the sisters and spoken to them.  The inquiries she addressed to one of the female servants only elicited the information that they were both in their rooms.  She delayed her return to the mother’s bedside to say her parting words of comfort to the daughters, before she left them for the night.  Norah’s room was the nearest.  She softly opened the door and looked in.  The kneeling figure by the bedside told her that God’s help had found the fatherless daughter in her affliction.  Grateful tears gathered in her eyes as she looked:  she softly closed the door, and went on to Magdalen’s room.  There doubt stayed her feet at the threshold, and she waited for a moment before going in.

A sound in the room caught her ear—­the monotonous rustling of a woman’s dress, now distant, now near; passing without cessation from end to end over the floor—­a sound which told her that Magdalen was pacing to and fro in the secrecy of her own chamber.  Miss Garth knocked.  The rustling ceased; the door was opened, and the sad young face confronted her, locked in its cold despair; the large light eyes looked mechanically into hers, as vacant and as tearless as ever.

That look wrung the heart of the faithful woman, who had trained her and loved her from a child.  She took Magdalen tenderly in her arms.

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Project Gutenberg
No Name from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.