She thanked him laconically for his thoughtfulness, and bade him “good-night,” without a responsive gleam of playfulness.  Her heart was weighed down with sick horror.  The almost certainty of which he spoke with professional coolness, was to her, who had never within her recollection stood beside a death-bed, a thing too frightful to be anticipated without dread, however its terrors might be alleviated by affection and wealth.  As the finale of their Christmas frolic—­perhaps the consequence of wilful neglect in those who should have known better than to abandon the wanderer to the ravages of hunger, cold, and intoxication—­the idea was ghastly beyond description.

She was about to diverge from the main hall on the second floor into the lateral passage leading to Mrs. Sutton’s room in the wing, when her name was called in a gentle, guarded key by her sister-in-law.

CHAPTER IX.

He departeth in darkness.

“Come in!  I want to talk to you!” said Mrs. Aylett, beckoning Mabel into her chamber, from the door of which she had hailed her.  “Sit down, my poor girl!  You are white as a sheet with fatigue.  I cannot see why you should have been suffered to know anything about this very disagreeable occurrence.  And Emmeline has been telling me that Mrs. Sutton actually let you go up into that Arctic room.”

“It was my choice.  Aunt Rachel went along to carry the light and to keep me company.  She would have dissuaded me from the enterprise if she could,” responded Mabel, sinking into the low, cushioned chair before the fire, which the mistress of the luxurious apartment had just wheeled forward for her, and confessing to herself, for the first time, that she was chilly and very tired.

“But where were the servants, my dear?  Surely you are not required, in your brother’s house, to perform such menial services as taking food and medicine to a sick vagrant.”

“Winston had forbidden them to go near the room.  I wish I had gone up earlier.  I might have been the means of saving a life which, however worthless it may seem to us, must be of value to some one.”

“Is he so far gone?”

The inquiry was hoarsely whispered, and the speaker leaned back in her fauteuil, a spark of fierce eagerness in her dilated eyes, Mabel, in her own anxiety, did not consider overstrained solicitude in behalf of a disreputable stranger.  She had more sympathy with it than with the relapse into apparent nonchalance that succeeded her repetition of the doctor’s report.

“He does not think the unfortunate wretch will revive, even temporarily, then?” commented the lady, conventionally compassionate, playing with her ringed fingers, turning her diamond solitaire in various directions to catch the firelight.  “How unlucky he should have strayed upon our grounds!  Was he on his way to the village?”