The man he addressed did not answer.  He turned a perturbed awkward face to his superior in rank, an older man, who was house steward.

In the house of mortal pain or death there is but one thing more full of suggestion than the faint smell of antiseptics,—­the gruesome, cleanly, unpleasant odour,—­that is, the unnatural sound of the whispering of hushed voices.  Lord Walderhurst turned cold, and felt it necessary to stiffen his spine when he heard his servant’s answer and the tone in which it was made.

“Her ladyship, my lord—­her ladyship is very low.  The doctors do not leave her.”

“Her ladyship?”

The man stepped back deferentially.  The door of the morning-room had been opened, and old Lady Maria Bayne stood on the threshold.  Her worldly air of elderly gaiety had disappeared.  She looked a hundred.  She was almost dilapidated.  She had allowed to relax themselves the springs which held her together and ordinarily supplied her with sprightly movement.

“Come here!” she said.

When he entered the room, aghast, she shut the door.

“I suppose I ought to break it to you gently,” she said shakily, “but I shall do no such thing.  It’s too much to expect of any woman who has gone through what I have during these last three days.  The creature is dying; she may be dead now.”

She sank on the sofa and began to wipe away pouring tears.  Her old cheeks were pale and her handkerchief showed touches of rose-pink on its dampness.  She was aware of their presence, but was utterly indifferent.  Walderhurst stared at her haggard disorder and cleared his throat, finding himself unable to speak without doing so.

“Will you have the goodness to tell me,” he said with weird stiffness, “what you are talking about?”

“About Emily Walderhurst,” she answered.  “The boy was born yesterday, and she has been sinking ever since.  She cannot possibly last much longer.”

“She!” he gasped, turning lead colour.  “Cannot possibly last,—­Emily?”

The wrench and shock were so unnatural that they reached that part of his being where human feeling was buried under selfishness and inhuman conventionality.  He spoke, and actually thought, of Emily first.

Lady Maria continued to weep shamelessly.

“I am over seventy,” she said, “and the last three days have punished me quite enough for anything I may have done since I was born.  I have been in hell, too, James.  And, when she could think at all, she has only thought of you and your miserable child.  I can’t imagine what is the matter with a woman when she can care for a man to such an extent.  Now she has what she wants,—­she’s dying for you.”

“Why wasn’t I told?” he asked, still with the weird and slow stiffness.

“Because she was a sentimental fool, and was afraid of disturbing you.  She ought to have ordered you home and kept you dancing attendance, and treated you to hysterics.”