It is to be hoped that the reader has not quite forgotten Miss Pengarvon and her sister, although we have heard nothing of them since that December night, now many years ago, when poor, unforgiven Isabel was found lying in the snow in front of the great door of Broome.
To the two lonely sisters, wearing out their uneventful lives in the gray old house, the changes wrought by time were few indeed. Their dark hair had slowly silvered, their long, thin faces had grown longer and thinner, their tall figures looked a little more gaunt than of yore, but that was all. To them the summer and winter of one year were so like the summer and winter of another, that they almost forgot the passage of time. They worked hard at their embroidery, and sold the proceeds of their labor; they pinched and scraped, and saved in every possible way, growing more miserly with every year. Barney Dale and his wife were still with them. No thought of leaving Broome ever crossed the mind of either. Other servants might come and go, but they stayed on, nor ever dreamed of change.
At length there came a morning, early in the autumn of the same year as that in which John Brancker was committed to take his trial for the murder of Mr. Hazeldine, when Miss Letitia found herself unable to rise from her bed. She had been ailing for some time from the effects of a bad cold, but during the last few days the symptoms had become considerably aggravated, and now she could hold up no longer. Miss Pengarvon had hinted more than once as to the advisability of calling in Doctor Bland, but this Miss Letitia had emphatically begged of her not to do. Neither she nor her sister had known a day's illness in their lives; her cold was a simple affair which a few days would put to rights; no Doctor had set foot in Broome since the late Lady Pengarvon's death, now nearly forty years ago; and after the lapse of so long a time she was not going to be the first to have one called in. She well remembered that Doctor Grantley's bill on the occasion of his attendance on Lady Pengarvon amounted to thirty guineas, yet, after all, his patient died. Doctors were an extravagance in which only rich people had a right to indulge. But although Miss Letitia refused to see a Doctor, Joanna Dale, despite all her remonstrances, insisted on lighting a fire in the sick lady's chamber. Miss Letitia was terribly afraid her sister would look upon even that small luxury as a piece of wasteful extravagance, and her first words to Miss Pengarvon, when the latter went upstairs to see her, were, "It is all Joanna's doing. She would insist on my having a fire."
Miss Pengarvon let her cold hand rest for a moment or two on her sister's fevered forehead, and then she said in her usual quiet way, "If Joanna had been a woman of sense, she would have gone and fetched Doctor Bland without saying a word to anyone, as soon as she had lighted your fire."
Miss Letitia stared at her sister, and then in a little while she said to herself, "Barbara must fancy that I'm far worse than I am, or she would not talk about a doctor in that off-hand kind of way."
As it fell out, however, no doctor was sent for till the following morning. Miss Pengarvon herself made her sister some gruel after a recipe in her mother's writing, which she hunted up out of a cupboard of odds-and-ends. Miss Letitia thought it exceedingly kind of Barbara, and drank a little of the gruel gratefully. It was not nearly so nice as the gruel Joanna had made her, but not for worlds would she have said so to anyone.
When at length Doctor Bland was called in, he seemed to think that his patient was suffering from nothing worse than a feverish cold. He advised her to keep her bed for the present, sent her a composing draught, and promised to call again next day.
"There will be no need for him to call after to-morrow," remarked Miss Letitia, still thinking of the expense. "Indeed, I am far from sure that there was any occasion for him to call at all. Poor people always doctor themselves for colds, and why should not I do the same?"
To this Miss Pengarvon made no reply. There was something in her sister's looks that made her more uneasy than she cared to admit, even to herself. She took her work into the sick woman's room, and sat with her all through the dull October day, and till far into the night. Miss Letitia was strangely drowsy, and could scarcely keep her eyes open for longer than a few minutes at a time.
"It must be something in this nasty medicine that makes me sleep so," she said once or twice with a touch of irritation. "I am sorry to be such poor company, Barbara."
Miss Barbara smiled a little grimly at this. At the best of times poor Letitia's company was never anything more than mildly depressing.
The following morning Dr. Bland found his patient no better. The feverish symptoms were more pronounced than before. He changed the medicine at once, and promised to call again next day.
"If he were of opinion that there were the slightest danger, he would call again before to-morrow," argued Miss Pengarvon with herself.
The bedrooms of the sisters adjoined each other, with a door of communication between. This door was always left open at night, so that there was a sense of companionship through the dark hours which was not unpleasant to either sister, although they never admitted it in so many words. Miss Pengarvon was always a light sleeper, and to-night she got up several times and stalked into her sister's room--a tall, gaunt figure in a long white night-dress and a ruffled nightcap. Miss Letitia was talking a great deal in her sleep, and it was her half-sister Isabel's name which she mentioned oftener than that of anyone else. Isabel seemed to be nearly always in some great peril, from which Letitia seemed to be vainly trying to rescue her. Once or twice when she opened her eyes she did not seem to recognize Barbara; and later on, when she woke up and asked for a drink, she fancied that it was her mother she was speaking to, and that she and her sister were on the point of setting out to gather blackberries in the wood. A great dread began to take possession of Miss Pengarvon's heart.
Dr. Bland came as usual in the course of the forenoon. Miss Pengarvon followed him out of the sick woman's room. "My sister is much worse this morning," she said. There was a sort of menace in her voice, and a fierce, angry light in her eyes as she spoke, that half frightened the little Doctor. It was as though she implied that it was his fault her sister was no better.
"Scarcely worse, I think," responded the Doctor in his most soothing tones, "although, perhaps, there is hardly that improvement in her I had hoped to find. But these things take time, my dear madam, time."
"You know in your heart that she won't get better--that she will die," answered Miss Pengarvon, with a quiver of her thin, colorless lips.
"Bless my heart, madam, I know nothing of the kind!" responded the little man, a spot of angry red showing suddenly in each cheek; "on the contrary, I have every reason for thinking that your sister will soon be quite herself again."
"It is very doubtful to me, sir, whether you understand her case. If she is not better by to-morrow, I shall call in some further advice."
"As you please, madam, as you please," responded the Doctor, as he took himself off in a huff.............