“He is dying!” Maria repeated, in a frenzy, yet still in a whisper.

“Dying?  What do you know about it?” Ida asked, with icy emphasis.

“I know.  He has seen three specialists besides the doctor here.”

“And he told you instead of me?”

“He told me because he knew I loved him,” said Maria.  She was as white as death herself, and she trembled from head to foot with strange, stiff tremors.  Her blue eyes fairly blazed at her step-mother.

Suddenly the sick man began to breathe stertorously.  Even Ida started at that.  She glanced nervously towards the bed.  Little Evelyn, in her night-gown, her black fleece of hair fluffing around her face like a nimbus of shadow, came and stood in the doorway.

“What is the matter with papa?” she whispered, piteously.

“He is asleep, that is all, and breathing hard,” replied her mother.  “Go back to bed.”

“Go back to bed, darling,” said Maria.

“What is the matter?” asked Evelyn.  She burst into a low, frightened wail.

“Go back to bed this instant, Evelyn,” said her mother, and the child fled, whimpering.

Maria stood close to her father.  Ida seated herself in a chair beside the table on which the lamp stood.  Neither of them spoke again.  The dying man continued to breathe his deep, rattling breath, the breath of one who is near the goal of life and pants at the finish of the race.  The cook, a large Irishwoman, put her face inside the door.

“The doctor is comin’ right away,” said she.  Then in the same breath she muttered, looking at poor Harry, “Oh, me God!” and fled, doubtless to pray for the poor man’s soul.

Then the doctor’s carriage-wheels were heard, and he came up-stairs, ushered by Irene, who stood in the doorway, listening and looking with a sort of alien expression, as if she herself were immortal, and sneered and wondered at it all.

Ida greeted the doctor in her usual manner.  “Good-evening, doctor,” she said, smiling.  “I am sorry to have disturbed you at this hour, but Mr. Edgham has an acute attack of indigestion and I could not rouse him, and I thought it hardly wise to wait until morning.”

The doctor, who was an old man, unshaven and grim-faced, nodded and went up to the bed.  He did not open his medicine-case after he had looked at Harry.

“I suppose you can give him something, doctor?” Ida said.

“There is nothing that mortal man can do, madam,” said the doctor, surlily.  He disliked Ida Edgham, and yet he felt apologetic towards her that he could do nothing.  He in reality felt testily apologetic towards all mankind that he could not avert death at last.

Ida’s brilliant color faded then; she ceased to smile.  “I think I should have been told,” she said, with a sort of hard indignation.

The doctor said nothing.  He stood holding Harry’s hand, his fingers on the pulse.