into something like cunning.  For the rest Elizabeth had a very fair figure, but lacked her sister’s rounded loveliness, though the two were so curiously alike that at a distance you might well mistake the one for the other.  One might almost fancy that nature had experimented upon Elizabeth before she made up her mind to produce Beatrice, just to get the lines and distances.  The elder sister was to the other what the pale unfinished model of clay is to the polished statue in ivory and gold.

“Oh, my God! my God!” groaned the old man; “look, they have got them on the stretchers.  They are both dead.  Oh, Beatrice!  Beatrice! and only this morning I spoke harshly to her.”

“Don’t be so foolish, father,” said Elizabeth sharply.  “They may only be insensible.”

“Ah, ah,” he answered; “it does not matter to you, you don’t care about your sister.  You are jealous of her.  But I love her, though we do not understand each other.  Here they come.  Don’t stand staring there.  Go and see that the blankets and things are hot.  Stop, doctor, tell me, is she dead?”

“How can I tell till I have seen her?” the doctor answered, roughly shaking him off, and passing through the door.

Bryngelly Vicarage was a very simply constructed house.  On entering the visitor found himself in a passage with doors to the right and left.  That to the right led to the sitting-room, that to the left to the dining-room, both of them long, low and narrow chambers.  Following the passage down for some seven paces, it terminated in another which ran at right angles to it for the entire length of the house.  On the further side of this passage were several bedroom doors and a room at each end.  That at the end to the right was occupied by Beatrice and her sister, the next was empty, the third was Mr. Granger’s, and the fourth the spare room.  This, with the exception of the kitchens and servants’ sleeping place, which were beyond the dining-room, made up the house.

Fires had been lit in both of the principal rooms.  Geoffrey was taken into the dining-room and attended by the doctor’s assistant, and Beatrice into the sitting-room, and attended by the doctor himself.  In a few seconds the place had been cleared of all except the helpers, and the work began.  The doctor looked at Beatrice’s cold shrunken form, and at the foam upon her lips.  He lifted the eyelid, and held a light before the contracted pupil.  Then he shook his head and set to work with a will.  We need not follow him through the course of his dreadful labours, with which most people will have some acquaintance.  Hopeless as they seemed, he continued them for hour after hour.