Page:Haworth's.djvu/81

Rh She led the way to the second floor, and her knock being answered by a voice inside, she opened the door. The room was comfortable and of good size, a fire burned on the grate, and before it sat a girl with her hands clasped upon her knee.

She was a girl of nineteen, dark of face and slight of figure to thinness. When she turned her head slowly to look at him, Murdoch was struck at once with the peculiar steadiness of her large black eyes.

"She is asleep," she said in a low, cold voice.

There was a sound as of movement in the bed.

"I am awake," some one said. "If it is Stephen Murdoch's son, let him come here."

Murdoch went to the bedside and stood looking down at the woman who returned his gaze. She was a woman whose last hours upon earth were passing rapidly. Her beauty was now only something terrible to see; her breath came fast and short; her eyes met his with a look of anguish.

"Send the girl away," she said to him.

Low as her voice was, the girl heard it. She rose without turning to right or left and went out of the room.

Until the door closed the woman still lay looking up into her visitor's face, but as soon as it was shut she spoke laboriously.

"What is your name?" she asked.

He told her.

"You are like your father," she said, and then closed her eyes and lay so for a moment. "It is a mad thing I am doing," she said, knitting her brows with weak fretfulness, and still lying with closed eyes. "I—I do not know—why I should have done it—only that it is the last thing. It is not that I am fond of the girl—or that she