. She called
him John by accident in the tumult of the moment. "Have you heard
what has happened? But of course you have heard it."

"Heard what? I have heard nothing," said Johnny, arrested almost in
the doorway by the nature of the question,--and partly also, no
doubt, by the tumult of the moment. He had no idea how terrible
a tragedy was in truth in store for him; but he perceived that
the moment was to be tumultuous, and that he must carry himself
accordingly.

"Come in and close the door," she said. He came in and closed the
door. "Do you mean to say that you haven't heard what has happened
in Hook Court?"

"No;--what has happened in Hook Court?" Miss Demolines threw herself
back into an arm-chair, closed her eyes, and clasped both her hands
upon her forehead. "What has happened in Hook Court?" said Johnny,
walking up to her.

"I do not think I can bring myself to tell you," she answered.

Then he took one of her hands down from her forehead and held it in
his,--which she allowed passively. She was thinking, no doubt, of
something far different from that.

"I never saw you looking better in my life," said Johnny.

"Don't," said she. "How can you talk in that way, when my heart
is bleeding,--bleeding." Then she pulled away her hand, and again
clasped it with the other upon her forehead.

"But why is your heart bleeding? What has happened in Hook Court?"
Still she answered nothing, but she sobbed violently and the heaving
of her bosom showed how tumultuous was the tumult within it. "You
don't mean to say that Dobbs Broughton has come to grief:--that he's
to be sold out?"

"Man," said Madalina, jumping up from her chair, standing at her full
height, and stretching out both her arms, "he has destroyed himself!"
The revelation was at last made with so much tragic propriety, in
so excellent a tone, and with such an absence of all the customary
redundancies of commonplace relation, that I think that she must have
rehearsed the scene,--either with her mother or with the page. Then
there was a minute's silence, during which she did not move even an
eyelid. She held her outstretched hands without dropping a finger
half an inch. Her face was thrust forward, her chin projecting, with
tragic horror; but there was no vacillation even in her chin. She did
not wink an eye, or alter to the breadth of a hair the aperture of
her lips. Surely she was a great genius if she did it all without
previous rehearsal. Then, befor