Her lips framed the word: “Dead!” Then she swayed and he had to uphold her. “Come, come!” said he soothingly, yet shuddering all over his comfortable flesh to feel what skeleton attenuation lay between his hands. “My dear child, do not give way to this. There is nothing, there can be really nothing alarming about the passing away of one who has attained the allotted span. Poor Simon!” She reared herself with extraordinary energy to fix eyes full of fierce questioning upon him. He went on: “Thank God, I can quite reassure you about David—” “David!” She echoed the name with what was almost a shriek; then caught the end of her hanging sleeve and thrust it to her mouth, as if to keep any further sound from escaping. “Did you not know?” asked the rector. “We were in much anxiety, but whatever noxious drug was——” he stopped unwilling to raise the question. He saw a terror come into those strange fixed eyes. Quite bewildered himself, he proceeded again, trying to reassure the woman: “David’s in no danger, thank Heaven!” Dropping her hand, Lady Lochore turned upon the astonished rector a countenance of such fury that he stepped back hastily as from a madwoman. “Thank Heaven!” she repeated with a laugh, that made his blood run cold. The next instant she turned and fled from him, once more stopping her mouth with her sleeve; in spite of which the sound of her hysterical mirth continued to echo back to him down the vaulted passage after she had turned the corner. The rector remained lost in thought. “She is very ill—dying!” he told himself. “Lord, thy hand is heavy on this house!” Even in the secrecy of his soul he was loth to search into the weird feeling now encompassing him, that there was more than illness in Lady Lochore’s face. The parson hoped that, under the reaction of the good news he brought her, Ellinor might obtain the relief of tears. But in this he was disappointed. “Thank you,” she said, in a whisper; and sat down again upon the bench from which, upon his entrance, she had risen rigidly and as if bracing herself for a final blow. Her clenched hands relaxed; while the left lay passive on her knee, she began with the right absently to pat and fondle the folds of sheet that lay over her father’s cold breast. Dr. Tutterville looked at her in puzzled silence. The action was full of a woman’s tenderness, yet he intuitively felt that the thoughts behind the faintly drawn brow, under the marble composure, were not occupied with a daughter’s sorrow. He felt he had been denied a confidence of vital importance. Strange things had taken place in the house, of which he had yet no explanation. Gently he laid the warm comfort of his clasp upon the woman’s hand and stayed its futile caress. “Dear child, what is it? Can I not help?” She started, and flung a swift look at his wise and grave face. There came a sort of fear also in her eyes. Fear into the true eyes of Ellinor! Then she fell back into her abstraction.