e telegram, standing between Marchmont and Dick. She handed it
to Dick, saying, "Read it, and will you send an answer that I'll come as
early as possible in the morning;" then she walked to the table and sat
down by it. Dick gave Marchmont the slip of paper and went off to
despatch the answer. Nobody else was in the room, except Fanny Gaston,
who was playing softly on the piano in the corner. Marchmont came up to
May and put the telegram down on the table by her.

"I'm so sorry," he said formally and constrainedly.

"I don't suppose it's very serious," she said. "But I must go, of course."
She went on under the cover of Fanny's gentle music. "It's all rather odd
though--its coming to-night and its happening at the Mildmays'. I forgot,
though, you don't know why I feel that so odd. How Lady Mildmay'll nurse
him! I expect I shall have a struggle to get him out of the house and
home again."

Marchmont made no answer but stood looking down on her face. She met his
glance fairly, and knew what it was that had forced itself into his mind
and now found expression in his eyes. She had declared to him that her
fate was irrevocable, that the lines of her life were set, that nothing
but death could alter them, and that death had no part in her thoughts
about her husband. The telegram did not prove her wrong; yet seizure was
a vague word under which much might lie hidden. But her mood and her
feeling still remained; it was not in hope or in any attempt at
self-consolation, but in the expression of an obstinate conviction which
dominated her mind that she said in answer to Marchmont's glance, "I
can't believe it's anything really amiss. I expect I shall find him at
work again when I get back to-morrow."

With a little movement of his hands Marchmont turned away. He had at
command no conventional phrases in which to express a desire that she
might prove right. It was impossible to say that he wished she might
prove wrong; even in his own mind a man leaves a hope like that vague and
unformulated. But he marvelled, still without understanding, at the
strange obstinate idea which seemed almost to exalt Quisante above the
ordinary lot of mortals, to see in him a force so living that it could
not perish, a vitality so intense that death could lay no hand on it. He
glanced at her as he crossed the room to the piano; she sat now with the
telegram in her hands and her eyes fixed on the floor in front of her. It
needed a sharper summons, a