After writing this second letter, I set forth instantly for the house to which Mr. Bernard had directed me. No thought of myself; no thought, even, of the peril suggested by the ominous disclosure about Mannion, in the postscript to the surgeon’s letter, ever crossed my mind. In the great stillness, in the heavenly serenity that had come to my spirit, the wasting fire of every sensation which was only of this world, seemed quenched forever.
It was eleven o’clock when I arrived at the house. A slatternly, sulky woman opened the door to me. “Oh! I suppose you’re another doctor,” she muttered, staring at me with scowling eyes. “I wish you were the undertaker, to get her out of my house before we all catch our deaths of her! There! there’s the other doctor coming downstairs; he’ll show you the room—I won’t go near it.”
As I took the candle from her hand, I saw that Mr. Bernard was approaching me from the stairs.
“You can do no good, I am afraid,” he said, “but I am glad you have come.”
“There is no hope, then?”
“In my opinion, none. Turner came here this morning, whether she recognised him, or not, in her delirium, I cannot say; but she grew so much worse in his presence, that I insisted on his not seeing her again, except under medical permission. Just now, there is no one in the room—are you willing to go upstairs at once?”
“Does she still speak of me in her wanderings?”
“Yes, as incessantly as ever.”
“Then I am ready to go to her bedside.”