nted us.
Dorothy was not in the little chamber. With an impulsive gesture
Sinclair pointed to the bed--it had not been lain in--then to the
gas--it was still burning. The communicating-room, in which Mrs. Lansing
slept, was also lighted, but silent as the one in which we stood. This
last fact struck us as the most incomprehensible of all. Mrs. Lansing
was not the woman to sleep through a disturbance. Where was she, then?
And why did we not hear her strident and aggressive tones rising in
angry remonstrance at our intrusion? Had she followed her niece from the
room? Should we in another minute encounter her ponderous figure in the
group of people we could now hear hurrying toward us? I was for
retreating and hunting the house over for Dorothy. But Sinclair, with
truer instinct, drew me across the threshold of this silent room.

Well was it for us that we entered there together, for I do not know how
either of us, weakened as we were by our forebodings and all the alarms
of this unprecedented night, could have borne alone the sight that
awaited us.

On the bed situated at the right of the doorway lay a form--awful,
ghastly, and unspeakably repulsive. The head, which lay high but inert
upon the pillow, was surrounded with the grey hairs of age, and the
eyes, which seemed to stare into ours, were glassy with reflected light
and not with inward intelligence. This glassiness told the tale of the
room's grim silence. It was death we looked on, not the death we had
anticipated, and for which we were in a measure prepared, but one fully
as awful, and having for its victim, not Dorothy Camerden nor even
Gilbertine Murray, but the heartless aunt, who had driven them both like
slaves, and who now lay facing the reward of her earthly deeds _alone_.

As a realisation of the awful truth came upon me I stumbled against the
bedpost, looking on with almost blind eyes as Sinclair bent over the
rapidly whitening face, whose naturally ruddy colour no one had ever
before seen disturbed. And I was still standing there when Mr. Armstrong
and all the others came pouring in. Nor have I any distinct remembrance
of what was said or how I came to be in the antechamber again. All
thought, all consciousness even, seemed to forsake me, and I did not
really waken to my surroundings till some one near me whispered:

"Apoplexy!"

Then I began to look about me and peer into the faces crowding up on
every side for the only one which could give me back