Standing for an instant under the fascination of terror, she recovered herself with a shiver, and, stepping down from the chair where she had been fixing the blind, with the instinct of real woman, she ran to the bed of the room where she was, and made it ready.

Why did she feel that it was Shiel Crozier's bed which should be made ready?
Or did she not feel it?
Was it only a dazed, automatic act, not connected with the person who was to lie in the bed?
Was she then a fatalist?
Were trouble and sorrow so much her portion that to her mind this tragedy, whatever it was, must touch the man nearest to her--and certainly Shiel Crozier was far nearer than Jesse Bulrush.

Quite apart from wealth or position, personality plays a part more powerful than all else in the eyes of every woman who has a soul which has substance enough to exist at all.

Such men as Crozier have compensations for "whate'er they lack." It never occurred to Mrs.Tynan to go to Jesse Bulrush's room or the room of middle-aged, comely Nurse Egan.

She did the instinctive thing, as did the woman who sent a man a rope as a gift, on the ground that the fortune in his hand said that he was born not to be drowned.
Mrs.Tynan's instinct was right.