“‘Take me to them.’”

They were lying in one room, her husband nearest the door, the other in a small alcove some ten feet away.  Both were unconscious; both were surrounded by groups of frightened attendants who fell back as she approached.  A doctor stood at the bed-head of her husband, but as her eye met his he stepped aside with a shake of the head and left the place empty for her.

“The action was significant.  I saw that she understood what it meant, and with constricted heart watched her as she bent over the dying man and gazed into his wide-open eyes, already sightless and staring.  Calculation was in her look and calculation only; and calculation, or something equally unintelligible, sent her next glance in the direction of his brother.  What was in her mind?  I could understand her indifference to Frank even at the crisis of his fate, but not the interest she showed in Andrew.  It was an absorbing one, altering her whole expression.  I no longer knew her for my dear young madam, and the jealousy I had never felt towards Frank rose to frantic resentment in my breast as I beheld what very likely might be a tardy recognition of the other’s well-known passion, forced into disclosure by the exigencies of the moment.

“Alarmed by the strength of my feelings, and fearing an equal disclosure on my own part, I sought for a refuge from all eyes and found it in a little balcony opening out at my right.  On to this balcony I stepped and found myself face to face with a star-lit heaven.  Had I only been content with my isolation and the splendour of the spectacle spread out before me!  But no, I must look back upon that bed and the solitary woman standing beside it!  I must watch the settling of her body into rigidity as a voice rose from beside the other Postlethwaite saying, ’It is a matter of minutes now,’ and then—­and then—­the slow creeping of her hand to her husband’s mouth, the outspreading of her palm across the livid lips—­its steady clinging there, smothering the feeble gasps of one already moribund, till the quivering form grew still, and Frank Postlethwaite lay dead before my eyes!

“I saw, and made no outcry, but she did, bringing the doctor back to her side with the startled exclamation: 

“’Dead?  I thought he had an hour’s life left in him, and he has passed before his brother.’

“I thought it hate—­the murderous impulse of a woman who sees her enemy at her mercy and can no longer restrain the passion of her long-cherished antagonism; and while something within me rebelled at the act, I could not betray her, though silence made a murderer of me too.  I could not.  Her spell was upon me as in another instant it was upon everyone else in the room.  No suspicion of one so self-repressed in her sadness disturbed the universal sympathy; and encouraged by this blindness of the crowd, I vowed within myself never to reveal her secret.  The man was dead, or as good as dead, when she touched him; and now that her hate was expended she would grow gentle and good.