“Don’t cry, dear!” said Rachael’s rich, kind voice.  She put a hand upon Charlotte’s shoulder.  “Did you want to ask for Charlie?”

“I know how odd, how very odd it must look,” said Charlotte, managing a wet smile, “and my crying—­perfectly absurd—­I can’t think why I’m so silly!”

“We’ve all been pretty near crying, ourselves, this morning,” Rachael said, not looking at her, but rather seeming to explain to the sympathetic yet pleasurably thrilled Fanny.  “Dear boy, he is very ill.  Doctor Hamilton has just been here; and he tells us frankly that it is only a question of a few hours now—­”

At this poor Charlotte tried to compose her face to the merely sorrowful and shocked expression of a person justified in her friendly concern, but succeeded only in giving Mrs. Gregory a quivering look of mortal hurt.

“I was afraid so,” she stammered huskily.  “Elfrida Hamilton told me.  I was so—­sorry—­”

Rachael began to perceive that this was a great adventure, a tragic and heroic initiative for Charlotte.  Poor Charlotte, red-eyed behind her strong glasses, the bloom of youth gone from her face, was perhaps touching this morning, the pinnacle of the few strong emotions her life was to know.

“How well did you know Charlie, dear?” asked Rachael when Fanny was for the moment out of hearing and they were in the dark, rep-draped reception-room.  She had asked Charlotte to sit down, but Charlotte nervously had said that she could stay but another minute.

“Oh, n-n-not very well, Aunt Rachael—­that is, we didn’t see each other often, since”—­Rachael knew since when, and liked Charlotte for the clumsy substitute—­“since Billy was married.  I know Charlie called, but M’ma didn’t tell me until weeks later, and then we were on the ocean.  We met now and then, and once he telephoned, and I think he would have liked to see me, but M’ma felt so strongly—­there was no way.  And then last summer—­we h-h-happened to meet, he and I, at Jane Cook’s wedding, and we had quite a talk.  I knew M’ma would be angry, but it just seemed as if I couldn’t think of it then.  And we talked of the things we liked, you know, the sort of house we both liked—­not like other people’s houses!” Charlotte’s plain young face had grown bright with the recollection, but now her voice sank lifelessly again.  “But M’ma made me promise never to speak to him again, and of course I promised,” she said dully.

“I see.”  Rachael was silent.  There seemed to be nothing to say.

“I suppose I couldn’t—­speak to him a moment, Aunt Rachael?” Charlotte was scarlet, but she got the words out bravely.

“Oh, my dear, he wouldn’t know you.  He doesn’t know any of us now.  He just lies there, sometimes sighing a little—­”

Charlotte was as pale now as she had been rosy before, her lip trembled, and her whole face seemed to be suffused with tears.

“I see,” she said in turn.  “Thank you, Aunt Rachael, thanks ever so much.  I—­I wish you’d tell his grandmother how sorry I am.  I—­ suppose Fanny and I had better go now.”