She held her old music-book clutched fast mechanically in both hands.

She stood, the specter of herself.

With a dreadful vacancy in her eyes, with a dreadful stillness in her voice, she repeated the man's last words: "Seven passengers badly hurt; and two--" Her tortured fingers relaxed their hold; the book dropped from them; she sank forward heavily.

Miss Garth caught her before she fell--caught her, and turned upon the man, with the wife's swooning body in her arms, to hear the husband's fate.
"The harm is done," she said; "you may speak out.

Is he wounded, or dead ?" "Dead.".