He did not ask many questions, and Phoebe replied more frequently to
his inquiries than did Sylvia, who looked into his face with a
blank, tearless, speechless despair, that gave him more pain than
the sight of her dying mother.
The long decay of Mrs. Robson's faculties and health, of which he was
well aware, had in a certain manner prepared him for some such
sudden termination of the life whose duration was hardly desirable,
although he gave several directions as to her treatment; but the
white, pinched face, the great dilated eye, the slow comprehension
of the younger woman, struck him with alarm; and he went on asking
for various particulars, more with a view of rousing Sylvia, if even
it were to tears, than for any other purpose that the information
thus obtained could answer.
'You had best have pillows propped up behind her--it will not be
for long; she does not know that you are holding her, and it is only
tiring you to no purpose!' Sylvia's terrible stare continued: he put his advice into action,
and gently tried to loosen her clasp, and tender hold. This she
resisted; laying her cheek against her poor mother's unconscious
face.
'Where is Hepburn?' said he. 'He ought to be here!' Phoebe looked at Nancy, Nancy at Phoebe. It was the latter who
replied, 'He's neither i' t' house nor i' t' shop. A seed him go past t'
kitchen window better nor an hour ago; but neither William Coulson
or Hester Rose knows where he's gone to.
Dr Morgan's lips were puckered up into a whistle, but he made no
sound.
'Give me baby!' he said, suddenly. Nancy had taken her up off the
bed where she had been sitting, encircled by her mother's arm. The
nursemaid gave her to the doctor. He watched the mother's eye, it
followed her child, and he was rejoiced. He gave a little pinch to
the baby's soft flesh, and she cried out piteously; again the same
action, the same result. Sylvia laid her mother down, and stretched
out her arms for her child, hushing it, and moaning over it.
'So far so good!' said Dr Morgan to himself. 'But where is the
husband? He ought to be here.' He went down-stairs to make inquiry
for Philip; that poor young creature, about whose health he had
never felt thoroughly satisfied since the fever after her
confinement, was in an anxious condition, and with an inevitable
shock awaiting her. Her husband ought to be with her, and supporting
her to bear it.
Dr Morgan went into the shop. Hester alone was there. Coulson had
gone to his comfortable dinner at his well-ordered house, with his
common-place wife. If he had felt anxious about Philip's looks and
strange disappearance, he had also managed to account for them in
some indifferent way.