"Oh, here we are!" he exclaimed, in relief, as he picked up a vial containing morphine tablets and shook them between him and the light. "She's had a close shave. She thought she was taking enough." "You mean that she--" "Oh yes." The doctor put the vial into his pocket. "It is a plain case. Her mind is out of order. She actually--so my clerk heard to-night--went to the undertaker's and asked him the prices of various costly caskets. The undertaker thought she was referring to her recent bad news. She will come out of this sleep all right. But the truth is she can't recover. It is only a question of a week or two now. In fact, she won't get up from this. She hasn't the vitality. She has literally burned herself out and been living on her energies and nerves. She couldn't stand the shock of that sad calamity. I am sorry for you, too, Mrs. Trott. John was a fine boy. Now leave her just as she is. She will be easier handled in the morning. She is in no immediate danger." The doctor took up his satchel and started away. In the darkened corridor Lizzie overtook him just as he had reached the head of the stairs. "You said Jane had bad news, doctor," she began, falteringly, dreading revelations to come. "Do you mean about--about John taking her niece away?" "Yes, Mrs. Trott, and the other--the deaths of the two in that awful wreck." "Death? Wreck?" Lizzie leaned breathlessly against the wall. "What wreck--whose death?" "Oh, oh, is it possible that you haven't heard?" And, standing in the slender shaft of light from Jane's partly closed door, the doctor awkwardly explained. Lizzie listened, as he thought, calmly enough. He couldn't read her face, for she kept it averted in the shadow. "I understand it all now," she said, after a little pause. "Oh, oh, so that's it! That's what Jane meant." She went with the doctor to the door, said good night, and locked the door after him. She stood in the dismal silence of the dark hall and heard his horse trotting down the street. She started to her room, sliding her hand on the smooth balustrade. Her room gained, she stood in the center of it as purposeless and dazed as a sleeper waking in strange surroundings. She felt for a chair and sank into it. "John dead!" she suddenly exclaimed. "Why, why, it can't be--and yet why not, if they all say so? John dead, Dora dead, Jane dying, and I--and I left here all alone by myself!" She undressed in the dark, vaguely dreading the light as if it might somehow stab her anew. She reclined on the bed. For hours she lay awake. She tried to cry, but could not summon tears to her eyes. She would have been afraid of Jane's staggering insanely about the house had the doctor not assured her that she would not stir till morning. Jane was not a ghost, but she was a would-be suicide, and that was quite as gruesome to think about. CHAPTER XL Finally she fell asleep, and the sun was well up when she was waked by Mandy, the negro servant.