...
Very slowly, as if lifting great weights, she raised her eyes, knowing
that there, across the tumbled bed, where the darkness of the room
showed between the parted curtains, the Presence was poised. Yet there
was nothing there to see--no tortured, smoke-stained, throttling
face--ah! that could not be--but neither was there the merry, kindly
face, with large cheerful eyes and tender mouth smiling; no hand held
the curtains that the face might peer in. Neither then nor at any time
in all her life did Marjorie believe that she saw him; yet neither then
nor in all her life did she doubt he had been there while her mother
died.
Again her mother smiled--and this time she opened her eyes to the full,
and there was no dismay in them, nor fear, nor disappointment; and she
looked a little to her left, where the parted curtains showed the
darkness of the room....
Then Marjorie closed her eyes, and laid her head on the bed where her
mother's body sank back and down into the pillows. Then the girl
slipped heavily to the floor, and the maids sprang up screaming.
IV
It was not till two hours later that Mr. Simpson arrived. He had been
found at last at Hathersage, only a few miles away, as one of the men,
on his return ride, had made one last inquiry before coming home; and
there he ran into the priest himself in the middle of the street. The
priest had taken the man's horse and pushed on as well as he could
through the dark, in the hopes he might yet be in time.
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