“Why should I die?  Why should I die more than others?  I don’t think I am dying, Lionel,” she added, after a pause.  “I shall get well yet.”

She stretched out her hand for some cooling drink that was near, and Lionel gave her a teaspoonful.  He was giving her another, but she jerked her head away and spilled it.

“It’s not nice,” she said.  So he put it down.

“I want to see Deborah,” she resumed.

“My dear, they are at Heartburg.  I told you so this morning.  They will be home, no doubt, by the next train.  Jan has sent to them.”

“What should they do at Heartburg?” she fractiously asked.

“They went over yesterday to remain until to-day, I hear.”

Subsiding into silence, she lay quite still, save for her panting breath, holding Lionel’s hand as he bent over her.  Some noise in the corridor outside attracted her attention, and she signed to him to open the door.

“Perhaps it is Dr. Hayes,” she murmured.  “He is better than Jan.”

Better than Jan, insomuch as that he was rather given to assure his patients they would soon be strong enough to enjoy the al fresco delights of a gipsy party, even though he knew that they had not an hour’s prolonged life left in them.  Not so Jan.  Never did a more cheering doctor enter a sick-room than Jan, so long as there was the faintest shade of hope.  But, when the closing scene was actually come, the spirit all but upon the wing, then Jan whispered of hope no more.  He could not do it in his pure sincerity.  Jan could be silent; but Jan could not tell a man, whose soul was hovering on the threshold of the next world, that he might yet recreate himself dancing hornpipes in this.  Dr. Hayes would; it was in his creed to do so; and in that respect Dr. Hayes was different from Jan.

It was not Dr. Hayes.  As Lionel opened the door, Lucy was passing it, and Therese was at the end of the corridor talking to Lady Verner.  Lucy stopped to make her kind inquiries, her tone a low one, of how the invalid was then.

“Whose voice is that?” called out Mrs. Verner, her words scarcely reaching her husband’s ears.

“It is Lucy Tempest’s,” he said, closing the door, and returning to her.  “She was asking after you.”

“Tell her to come in.”

Lionel opened the door again, and beckoned to Lucy.  “Mrs. Verner is asking if you will come in and see her,” he said, as she approached.

All the old grievances, the insults of Sibylla, blotted out from her gentle and forgiving mind, lost sight of in this great crisis, Lucy went up to the couch, and stood by the side of Sibylla.  Lionel leaned over its back.

“I trust you are not feeling very ill, Mrs. Verner,” she said in a low, sweet tone as she bent towards her and touched her hand.  Touched it only; let her own fall lightly upon it; as if she did not feel sufficiently sure of Sibylla’s humour to presume to take it.