t alarmed her. The old lady was a
little quiet, perhaps, but went about her minute affairs as usual. She
asked the girl to read to her sometimes, and listened unblenching to
whatever was offered her; she attended in the kitchen daily, organised
varieties of food, and appeared interested in all that concerned her
son. She packed his bag with her own hands, set out his furs for the
swift flight to Paris, and waved to him from the window as he went down
the little path towards the junction. He would be gone three days, he
said.

It was on the evening of the second day that she fell ill; and Mabel,
running upstairs, in alarm at the message of the servant, found her
rather flushed and agitated in her chair.

"It is nothing, my dear," said the old lady tremulously; and she added
the description of a symptom or two.

Mabel got her to bed, sent for the doctor, and sat down to wait.

She was sincerely fond of the old lady, and had always found her
presence in the house a quiet sort of delight. The effect of her upon
the mind was as that of an easy-chair upon the body. The old lady was so
tranquil and human, so absorbed in small external matters, so
reminiscent now and then of the days of her youth, so utterly without
resentment or peevishness. It seemed curiously pathetic to the girl to
watch that quiet old spirit approach its extinction, or rather, as Mabel
believed, its loss of personality in the reabsorption into the Spirit of
Life which informed the world. She found less difficulty in
contemplating the end of a vigorous soul, for in that case she imagined
a kind of energetic rush of force back into the origin of things; but in
this peaceful old lady there was so little energy; her whole point, so
to speak, lay in the delicate little fabric of personality, built out of
fragile things into an entity far more significant than the sum of its
component parts: the death of a flower, reflected Mabel, is sadder than
the death of a lion; the breaking of a piece of china more irreparable
than the ruin of a palace.

"It is syncope," said the doctor when he came in. "She may die at any
time; she may live ten years."

"There is no need to telegraph for Mr. Brand?"

He made a little deprecating movement with his hands.

"It is not certain that she will die--it is not imminent?" she asked.

"No, no; she may live ten years, I said."

He added a word or two of advice as to the use of the oxygen injector,
and went away.

* * * *