she sleeps at all."

"And she won't go to him?"

"If he were dying, and she alone with him in the house, I don't believe
she'd go near him."

The Rector stepped in and asked a few questions as to arrangements for
the night. The patient, it seemed, was asleep, in consequence of a
morphia injection, and likely to remain so for an hour or two. He was
dying of an internal injury inflicted by a fall of rock in the mine
some ten days before. Surgery had done what it could, but signs of
blood-poisoning had appeared, and the man's days were numbered.

The doctor had left written instructions, which the nurse handed over to
Meynell. If certain symptoms appeared, the doctor was to be summoned. But
in all probability the man's fine constitution, injured though it had
been by drink, would enable him to hold out another day or two. And the
hideous pain of the first week had now ceased; mortification had almost
certainly set in, and all that could be done was to wait the slow and
sure failure of the heart.

The nurse took leave. Meynell was hanging up his hat in the little
passageway, when the door of the front parlour opened, after being
unlocked.

Meynell looked round.

"Good evening, Mrs. Bateson. You are coming upstairs, I hope, with me?"