"At the end of the month Lady Oxted has promised to come and spend a Sunday here, and with her will come--O Uncle Francis, how long this or something of the sort has been delayed, and how patiently you have waited for it!--with her will come her niece, Miss Aylwin, who has just come to England from Italy."
He looked not at his uncle as he spoke, but, with a delicacy unconscious and instinctive, kept his eyes on the ground. Such an announcement as the visit of Harold Harmsworth's sister must, he knew, be momentous to the old man, and perhaps would give rise to an emotion which it was not fit that other eyes should see. His uncle would know that in the mind of one at least most intimately connected with the tragedy, suspicion was not. This visit would be a reconciliation, formal though silent. It was right that the hearer should have as great a privacy as might be, and so, both when he spoke and after he had finished speaking, Harry kept his eyes on the ground.
There was a moment's silence, broken by the crash of breaking china, and, looking quickly up, Harry saw the coffee cup fallen from his uncle's hand, and the brown stains leaping over the white tablecloth. The spoon clattered metallic in the shattered saucer and jumped to the floor, and Mr. Francis's hand dropped like lead on the edge of the table. The candles were between him and his uncle; he could see no more; and he sprang up with a sudden pang of horror insurgent within him.
There, with his head fallen over the back of the chair, lay Mr. Francis, sprawling and inert. His face was of a deadly, strangled white, the wholesome colour had fled his cheeks, and only on the lips and below the eyes lingered a mottled purple. His breathing was heavy and stertorous; you would have said he snored, and from the corner of the slack mouth lolled the protruding tongue. His hands lay limp upon his lap, gray and purple.
Harry made one step of it to the bell, and rang peal after violent peal, scarce daring to look, yet scarce able not to look at that masklike horror of a face at the end of the table. "What had he done? What if he had killed him? Death could not be more ghastly!" ran the shrill voice of terror-stricken thought through his head. His instinct was to go to him, though his flesh shrank and shivered at the thought of approaching that, to do something, but he knew not what, yet meddling might only cause damage irreparable, instead of giving relief. Still he did not cease ringing, and it seemed to him that the muffled clanging of the bell he rang had sounded for years, when steps came along the passage and burst into the room.