Page:Braddon--The Trail of the Serpent.djvu/79

75 "I haven't seen her this evening," answered Jabez. And then, turning to the girl, he asked her if she knew where the old woman was.

"No; she went out some time ago, and didn't say where she was going. She's not quite right in her mind, you know, sir, and often goes out after dark."

The doctor seated himself on a broken chair, near the mattress on which the sick man lay. Only one feeble guttering candle, with a long, top-heavy wick, lighted the dismal and comfortless room. Jabez paced up and down with that soft step of which we have before spoken. Although in his character of a philosopher the death of a fellow-creature could scarcely have been very distressing to him, there was an uneasiness in his manner on this night which he could not altogether conceal. He looked from the doctor to the girl, and from the girl to his sick brother. Sometimes he paused in his walk up and down the room to peer out at the open door. Once he stooped over the feeble candle to look at his watch. There was a listening expression too in his eyes; an uneasy twitching about his mouth; and at times he could scarcely suppress a tremulous action of his slender fingers, which bespoke impatience and agitation. Presently the clocks of Slopperton chimed the first quarter after ten. On hearing this, Jabez drew the medical man aside, and whispered to him,—

"Are there no means," he said, "of getting that poor girl out of the way? She is very much attached to that unfortunate creature; and if he dies, I fear there will be a terrible scene. It would be an act of mercy to remove her by some stratagem or other. How can we get her away till it is all over?"

"I think I can manage it," said the doctor. "My partner has a surgery at the other end of the town; I will send her there."

He returned to the bedside, and presently said,—

"Look here, my good girl; I am going to write a prescription for something which I think will do our patient good. Will you take it for me, and get the medicine made up?"

The girl looked at him with an appealing glance in her mournful eyes.

"I don't like to leave him, sir."

"But if it's for his good, my dear?"

"Yes, yes, sir. You're very kind. I will go. I can run all the the way. And you won't leave him while I'm gone, will you, sir?"

"No, my good girl, I won't. There, there; here's the prescription. It's written in pencil, but the assistant will understand it. Now listen, while I tell you where to find the surgery."

He gave her the direction; and after a lingering and mournful