Now she has what she wants,--she's dying for you." "Why wasn't I told ?" he asked, still with the weird and slow stiffness.
"Because she was a sentimental fool, and was afraid of disturbing you.
She ought to have ordered you home and kept you dancing attendance, and treated you to hysterics." No one would have resented such a course of action more derisively than Lady Maria herself, but the last three days had reduced her to something like hysteria, and she had entirely lost her head.
"She has been writing cheerfully to me--" "She would have written cheerfully to you if she had been seated in a cauldron of boiling oil, it is my impression," broke in her ladyship.
"She has been monstrously treated, people trying to murder her, and she afraid to accuse them for fear that you would disapprove.

You know you have a nasty manner, James, when you think your dignity is interfered with." Lord Walderhurst stood clenching and unclenching his hands as they hung by his sides.

He did not like to believe that his fever had touched his brain, but he doubted his senses hideously.
"My good Maria," he said, "I do not understand a word you say, but I must go and see her." "And kill her, if she has a breath left! You will not stir from here.
Thank Heaven! here is Dr.Warren." The door had opened and Dr.Warren came in.

He had just laid down upon the coverlet of a bed upstairs what seemed to be the hand of a dying woman, and no man like himself can do such a thing and enter a room without a singular look on his face.
People in a house of death inevitably whisper, whatsoever their remoteness from the sick-room.

Lady Maria cried out in a whisper: "Is she still alive ?" "Yes," was the response.
Walderhurst went to him.
"May I see her ?" "No, Lord Walderhurst.