Sylvia's Lovers

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.