She nodded slowly, thoughtfully. “You have very well disposed, Charles,” she approved him. “If your father lives, it should not be a difficult matter--”
She checked suddenly and turned, while Rotherby, too, looked up and stepped quickly from the window-embrasure where he had stood.
The door of the bedroom had been suddenly pulled open, and Sir James came out, very pale and discomposed.
“Madam--your ladyship--my lord!” he gasped, his mouth working, his hands waving foolishly.
The countess rose to confront him, tall, severe and harsh. The viscount scowled a question. Sir James quailed before them, evidently in affliction.
“Madam--his lordship,” he said, and by his eloquent gesture of dejection announced what he had some difficulty in putting into words.
She stepped forward, and took him by the wrist. “Is he dying?” she inquired.
“Have courage, madam,” the doctor besought her.
The apparent irrelevancy of the request at such a moment, angered her. Her mood was dangerously testy. And had the doctor but known it, sympathy was a thing she had not borne well these many years.
“I asked you was he dying,” she reminded him, with a cold sternness that beat aside all his attempts at subterfuge.
“Your ladyship--he is dead,” he faltered, with lowered eyes.
“Dead?” she echoed dully, and her hand went to the region of her heart, her face turned livid under its rouge. “Dead?” she said again, and behind her, Rotherby echoed the dread word in a stupor almost equal to her own. Her lips moved to speak, but no words came. She staggered where she stood, and put her hand to her brow. Her son's arms were quickly about her. He supported her to a chair, where she sank as if all her joints were loosened.
Sir James flew for restoratives; bathed her brow with a dampened handkerchief; held strong salts to her nostrils, and murmured words of foolish, banal consolation, whilst Rotherby, in a half-dreaming condition, stunned by the suddenness of the blow, stood beside her, mechanically lending his assistance and supporting her.
Gradually she mastered her agitation. It was odd that she should feel so much at losing what she valued so little. Leastways, it would have been odd, had it been that. It was not--it was something more. In the awful, august presence of death, stepped so suddenly into their midst, she felt herself appalled.