"Her life depends on how you receive what I am going to tell you.
Should you upbraid her with her misfortune, or fail to stand by her as
only a mother can, I shall not answer for the consequences." Then he
told her Anna's secret.
The stricken woman did not cry out in her anguish, nor swoon away. She
raised a feebly protesting hand, as if to ward off a cruel blow; then
burying her face in her arms, she cowed before him. Not a sob shook
the frail, wasted figure. It was as if this most terrible misfortune
had dried up the well-springs of grief and robbed her of the blessed
gift of tears. The woman who in one brief year had lost everything
that life held dear to her--husband, home, wealth, position--everything
but this one child, could not believe the terrible sentence that had
been pronounced against her. Her Anna--her little girl! Why, she was
only a child! Oh, no, it could not be true. She never, never would
believe it.
Her brain whirled and seemed to stop. It refused to grasp so hideous a
proposition. The doctor was momentarily at a loss to know how to deal
with this terrible dry-eyed grief. The set look in her eyes, the
terrible calm of her demeanor were so much more alarming than the
wildest outpourings of grief would, have been.
"And this seizure, Mrs. Moore. Tell me exactly how it was brought
about," thinking to turn the current of her thoughts even for a moment.
She told him how Anna had gone out in the early afternoon, without
saying where she was going, and how she had returned to the house about
five o'clock, looking so pale and ill, that Hannah, an old family
servant who still lived with them, noticed it and begged her to sit
down while she went to fetch her a cup of tea. The maid left her
sitting by the fire-place reading a paper, and the next thing was the
terrible cry that brought them both. They found her lying on the floor
unconscious with the crumpled newspaper in her hand.
"See, here is the paper now, doctor," and he stooped to pick up the
crumpled sheet from which the girl had read her death warrant.
Together they went over it in the hope that it might furnish some clue.
Mrs. Moore's eyes were the first to fall on the fatal paragraph. She
read it through, then showed it to the doctor.
"That is undoubtedly the cause of the seizure," said the doctor.
"Oh, my poor, poor darling," moaned the mother, and the first tears
fell.