“What?  What?  What’s the matter?”

“Oh, my dear old governor—­and all alone!” cried Vandover through shut teeth.

“Oh, oh, the good God!” exclaimed the housekeeper, crossing herself and rolling her eyes.  “And him asking for matches in the little brass box only a minute since.  Oh, the good, kind master!”

Suddenly Vandover rushed down the stairs and through the front hall, snatching his hat from the hatrack as he passed.  He ran to call the family doctor, who lived some two blocks below on the same street.  He caught him just as he was getting into the carry-all with his family, bound for church.

Vandover and the physician rode back together in the carry-all, the two gray horses going up the steep hill at a trot.  The doctor was dressed for church; he wore red gloves with thick white seams, a spray of lilies-of-the-valley in his lapel.

“I’m afraid we can do nothing,” he said warningly.  “It’s your father’s old enemy, I suppose.  This was—­it was sure to happen sooner or later.  Any sudden shock, you know.”

Vandover scarcely listened, holding the door of the carry-all open with one hand, ready to jump out, beating the other hand upon his knee.

“Go back and take the rest of them to church now,” said the doctor to his coachman when the carry-all stopped in front of Vandover’s house.

The whole house was in the greatest agitation all the rest of the day.  The curtains were drawn, the door bell rang incessantly, strange faces passed the windows, and the noise of strange footsteps continually mounted and descended the staircase.  The hours for meals were all deranged, the table stood ready all day long, and one ate when there was a chance.  The telephone was in constant use, and at every moment messenger boys came and went, people spoke in low tones, walking on tiptoe; the florist’s wagon drove to the door again and again, and the house began to smell of tuberoses.  Reporters came, waiting patiently for interviews, sitting on the leather chairs in the dining-room, or writing rapidly on a corner of the dining-table, the cloth pushed back.  The undertaker’s assistants went about in their shirt-sleeves, working very hard, and toward the middle of the afternoon the undertaker himself tied the crepe to the bell handle.

Little by little a subdued excitement spread throughout the vicinity.  The neighbours appeared at their windows, looking down into the street, watching everything that went on.  It was a veritable event, a matter of comment and interest for the whole block.  Women found excuses to call on each other, talking over what had happened, as they sat near their parlour windows, shaking their heads at each other, peering out between the lace curtains.  The people on the cable-cars and the pedestrians looked again and again at the crepe on the bell handle, and the curtained windows, craning their necks backward when they had passed.  The neighbours’ children collected