It seemed to me it must be near daylight by the time the Doctor arrived.  I had dressed myself.  I dared not go into the room where my beloved father lay.

I had gone out of my room to the gallery, where I awaited Dr. Elweys, when I saw him walking briskly after the servant, his coat buttoned up to his chin, his hat in his hand, and his bald head shining.  I felt myself grow cold as ice, and colder and colder, and with a sudden sten my heart seemed to stand still.

I heard him ask the maid who stood at the door, in that low, decisive, mysterious tone which doctors cultivate—­

‘In here?’

And then, with a nod, I saw him enter.

‘Would not you like to see the Doctor, Miss Maud?’ asked Mary Quince.

The question roused me a little.

‘Thank you, Mary; yes, I must see him.’

And so, in a few minutes, I did.  He was very respectful, very sad, semi-undertakerlike, in air and countenance, but quite explicit.  I heard that my dear father ’had died palpably from the rupture of some great vessel near the heart.’  The disease had, no doubt, been ’long established, and is in its nature incurable.’  It is ’consolatory in these cases that in the act of dissolution, which is instantaneous, there can be no suffering.’  These, and a few more remarks, were all he had to offer; and having had his fee from Mrs. Rusk, he, with a respectful melancholy, vanished.

I returned to my room, and broke into paroxysms of grief, and after an hour or more grew more tranquil.

From Mrs. Rusk I learned that he had seemed very well—­better than usual, indeed—­that night, and that on her return from the study with the book he required, he was noting down, after his wont, some passages which illustrated the text on which he was employing himself.  He took the book, detaining her in the room, and then mounting on a chair to take down another book from a shelf, he had fallen, with the dreadful crash I had heard, dead upon the floor.  He fell across the door, which caused the difficulty in opening it.  Mrs. Rusk found she had not strength to force it open.  No wonder she had given way to terror.  I think I should have almost lost my reason.

Everyone knows the reserved aspect and the taciturn mood of the house, one of whose rooms is tenanted by that mysterious guest.

I do not know how those awful days, and more awful nights, passed over.  The remembrance is repulsive.  I hate to think of them.  I was soon draped in the conventional black, with its heavy folds of crape.  Lady Knollys came, and was very kind.  She undertook the direction of all those details which were to me so inexpressibly dreadful.  She wrote letters for me beside, and was really most kind and useful, and her society supported me indescribably.  She was odd, but her eccentricity was leavened with strong common sense; and I have often thought since with admiration and gratitude of the tact with which she managed my grief.