"It is true," said Claire. "No, no, it cannot be. I must be wrong. Quick! It may be some terrible fit!" She clung to his hand, and tried to hurry him out of the room, but he drew back. "No," he stammered, "not yet. Your--your news--agitated me, Claire. Does--wait a minute--does anyone--in the--in the house know?" "No, dear. I thought I heard a cry, and I came down, and she--" "A fit," he said hastily, as he took the glass from the top of the water-bottle, filled it, gulped the water down, and set bottle and glass back in their places. "A fit--yes--a fit." "Come with me, father, quick!" cried Claire. "Yes. Yes, I'll go with you--directly," he said, fumbling for his handkerchief in the tail of the coat thrown over the chair, finding his snuff-box, and taking a great pinch. "Come, pray come!" she cried again, as she gazed at him in a bewildered way, his trembling becoming contagious, and her lips quivering with a new dread greater than the horror at the end of the passage. "Yes--yes," he faltered--"I'll come. So alarming to be woke up--like this--in the middle of the night. Shall I--shall I ring, Claire? Or will you call the maids?" "Come with me first," cried Claire. "It may not be too late." "Yes," he cried, "it is--it is too late." "Father!" "You--you said she was dead," he cried hastily. "Yes--yes--let us go. Perhaps only a fit. Come." He seemed to be now as eager to go as he had been to keep back, and, holding his child's hand tightly, he hurried with her to Lady Teigne's apartment, where he paused on the mat to draw a long, catching breath. The next moment the door had swung to behind them, and father and daughter stood gazing one at the other. "Don't, don't," he cried, in a low, angry voice, as he turned from her. "Don't look at me like that, Claire. What--what do you want me to do?" Claire turned her eyes from him to gaze straight before her in a curiously dazed manner; and then, without a word, she crossed to the bedside and drew back the curtain, fixing her father with her eyes once more. "Look!" she said, in a harsh whisper; "quick! See whether we are in time." The old man uttered a curious supplicating cry, as if in remonstrance against the command that forced him to act, and, as if in his sleep, and with his eyes fixed upon those of his child, he walked up close to the bed, bent over it a moment, and then with a shudder he snatched the curtain from Claire's hand, and thrust it down. "Dead!" he said, with a gasp. "Dead!" There was an awful silence in the room for a few moments, during which the ticking of the little clock on the table beyond the bed sounded painfully loud, and the beat of the waves amid the shingle rose into a loud roar. "Father, she has been--" "Hush!" he half shrieked, "don't say so. Oh, my child, my child!" Claire trembled, and it was as though a mutual attraction drew them to gaze fixedly the one at the other, in spite of every effort to tear their eyes away.