"He feels so cold."

But Muriel did not move to obey. Instead she held out her arms.

"Let me take him, dear," she begged tremulously. Daisy shook her head
with a jealous tightening of her clasp. "He has been so ill, poor wee
darling," she whispered. "It came on so suddenly. There was no time
to do anything. But he is easier now. I think he is asleep. We won't
disturb him."

Muriel said no more. She rose and blindly poked the fire. Then--for
the sight of Daisy rocking her dead child with that set, ashen face
was more than she could bear--she turned and stole away, softly
closing the door behind her.

Again meeting the English servants hovering outside, she sent them
downstairs to light the kitchen fire, going herself to the dining-room
window to watch for the doctor. Her feet were bare and freezing, but
she would not return to her room for slippers. She felt she could not
endure that awful wailing at close quarters again. Even as it was, she
heard it fitfully; but from the nursery there came no sound.

She wondered if Blake had gone across the meadow to the doctor's
house--it was undoubtedly the shortest cut--and tried to calculate how
long it would take him.

The waiting was intolerable. She bore it with a desperate endurance.
She could not rid herself of the feeling that somehow Nick was near
her. She almost expected to see him come lightly in and stand beside
her. Once or twice she turned shivering to assure herself that she was
really alone.

There came at last the click of the garden-gate. They had come across
the drenched meadows. In a transient gleam of moonlight she saw the
two figures striding towards her. Grange stopped a moment to fasten
the gate. The doctor came straight on.

She ran to the front door and threw it open. The wind blew swirling
all about her, but she never felt it, though her very lips were numb
and cold.

"It's too late!" she gasped, as he entered. "It's too late!"

Jim Ratcliffe took her by the shoulders and forced her away from the
open door.

"Go and put something on," he ordered, "instantly!"

There was no resisting the mastery of his tone. She responded to it
instinctively, hardly knowing what she did.

The _ayah's_ paroxysm of grief had sunk to a low moaning when she
re-entered her room. It sounded like a dumb creature in pain. Hastily
she dressed, and twisted up her hair with fingers that she strove in
vain to steady.

Then noiselessly she crept back to the nursery.