Opening the door, he realised the situation with a sick sinking of the heart. Clodagh stood in the corridor with a blanched face, holding a candle in her shaking hand. "Oh, come, please!" she exclaimed. "Come quick!" Without a word he stepped forward, and the two hurried down the passage. In the sick-room the fire was glowing and additional candles had been lighted. For a second Milbanke paused at the door; then, as his eyes grew accustomed to the access of light, the scene became clear to him. On the bed lay Asshlin, his head partly propped up by pillows, his eyes wide, his breath coming in slow, difficult gasps; Gallagher was moving about the room with more quickness and deftness than the Englishman could have believed possible; Mrs. Asshlin, unnerved, and yet fascinated, leaned upon the end of the bed; while Nance--crying silently--followed the nurse to and fro in dazed, half-comprehending fear; and Hannah, the household factotum, crouched behind the door, weeping and murmuring inarticulate prayers. The picture turned Milbanke cold. With an instinctive gesture he paused, with the intention of shielding it from Clodagh's sight. But at the very moment that he turned towards her, a convulsion shook the dying man. He half-lifted himself in bed, his eyes staring wildly; as Gallagher rushed forward, a faint sound escaped him, his head fell forward, and his body collapsed in the doctor's arms. There was a breathless, appalled silence--a silence that seemed to extend over years. At last Gallagher looked up. "It's all over," he said in a hushed voice. For a minute no one spoke, no one moved. It seemed as if the whole room was petrified. Then Gallagher quietly laid the body back upon the pillows, and as though the action broke the spell, Clodagh gave a sudden sharp cry and ran forward to the bed. CHAPTER V The three days that followed Asshlin's death resolved themselves into so many hours of gloom and confusion, that found their culmination in the funeral ceremony. To Irishmen of every class, a funeral is invested with an almost symbolic importance, and a solemn consideration is bestowed upon its most minute details. And Milbanke, deeply imbued with the horror and suddenness of the whole disaster, was filled with a growing astonishment at the numberless preliminaries--the amount of precedence and prestige requiring consideration--before one poor human body could be hidden away. But he rose dutifully to the occasion and proved himself unfailingly patient and conscientious in every emergency, from the first repugnant interview with the undertaker to the woeful breakfast, partaken of in the early hours of the funeral morning, with the curtains drawn across the dining-room windows and the candles in the massive silver sconces shedding an unnatural light upon the table laden with eatables.