"Are there any letters?" "No letters, my lady." "Then--" Anne paused, and for the first time looked at the old servant attentively. "Is anything the matter, Dimsdale?" she asked. He hesitated, the fingers of one hand working a little, an unusual sign of agitation with him. With an effort at last he spoke. "Your ladyship instructed me to open any telegram that might arrive." Her heart gave a great throb of foreboding. "Certainly," she said. "Has there been a telegram then?" Dimsdale's hand clenched. He looked at her anxiously, rather piteously. "My lady--" he said, and stopped. Anne stood like a statue. She felt as if her vitality were suddenly arrested, as if every pulse had ceased to beat. "Please go on," she said in a whisper. "There has been a telegram. Either give it to me, or--tell me what was in it." Dimsdale made a jerky movement, as if pulling himself together. He put an unsteady hand into his breast-pocket. "It came this afternoon, my lady, about an hour ago. I am afraid it's bad news--very bad news. Yes, my lady, I'm telling you, I'm telling you. I regret to say Sir Giles has been took worse, took very sudden like, and--and--" "He is dead," Anne said very clearly, very steadily, in a tone that was neither of question nor of exclamation. Dimsdale bent his head. "He died at half-past three, my lady." He had the telegram in his hand. Anne took it from him and moved very quietly to the window. Mutely the old man stood and watched her in the silence, thankful for her composure. He was himself severely shaken, and the ordeal of telling her had been no light one. But as the silence still continued he began to grow uneasy again. He wondered if he ought to go, if she had forgotten to dismiss him. Her stately head was bent over the paper, which never crackled or stirred in her hand. There began to be something terrible, something fateful, in her passivity. Old Dimsdale shivered, and took the liberty of breaking the silence. "Would your ladyship wish a message to be sent to Baronmead?" She stirred at that, moved sharply as one suddenly awakened. Her face was quite white, but her eyes were alight, curiously vital, with a glitter that was almost of horror. "To Baronmead!" she said, a queer note of sharpness in her voice. "No, certainly not, most certainly not!" And there she stopped, stopped dead as though struck dumb. In the garden behind her, down among the lilac trees, a bird had begun to sing, eagerly, voluptuously, thrillingly, with a rapture as of the full spring-tide of life. Anne stood for a space of many seconds and listened, her white face upraised, her eyes wide and shining. And then suddenly her attitude changed. She put her hands over her face and tottered blindly from the open window. Dimsdale started to support her, but she needed no support. In a moment she was looking at him again, but with eyes from which all light had faded.