"I am sorry I was so long, sir; but I'd been polishing the grates and
fenders, and such like, and my hands and face were blacker than a
sweep's. I hope there's nothing wrong at the seaside, where Miss--"
"There is much that's wrong, Mrs. Woolper--hopelessly, irrecoverably
wrong. Miss Halliday is ill, very ill--doomed to die, if she remain in
your master's keeping."
"Lord help us, Mr. Hawkehurst! what do you mean?"
The terror in her face was no longer a vague terror. It had taken a form
and substance, and was a terror unutterably hideous, if ever human
countenance gave expression to human thought.
"I mean that your master is better skilled in the use of the agents that
kill than the agents that cure. Charlotte's father came to Philip
Sheldon's house a hale strong man, in the very prime of manhood. In that
house he sickened of a nameless disease, and died, carefully tended by
his watchful friend. The same careful watcher stands by Charlotte
Halliday's deathbed, and she is dying!"
"Dying! O, sir, for God's sake, don't say that!"
"She is dying, as her father died before her, by the hand of Philip
Sheldon."
"O, sir! Mr. Hawkehurst!" cried the old woman, with clasped hands lifted
in piteous supplication towards her master's denouncer. "It's not true.
It is not true. For God's dear love don't tell me it is true! I nursed
him when he was a baby, sir; and there wasn't a little trouble I had to
bear with him that didn't make him all the dearer to me.
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