A little
louder again, and with the same result.
"Is there no one there?" he asked himself. "No one, except--?"
He opened the door, and went in, with unshaken nerves, to look upon that
one quiet sleeper whom his summons could not awaken, whom his presence
could not disturb.
There was no nurse or watcher by the bed. Everything was arranged with
extreme neatness and precision; but it seemed to him that there were
objects missing in the room, objects that had been familiar to him during
the dead girl's illness, and which were associated with her presence,--
the clock that had stood on the table by her bed, a stand of books, a low
easy-chair, with embroidered cover worked by her mother and Diana Paget.
The room looked blank and empty without these things, and Mr. Sheldon
wondered what officious hand had removed them.
Yonder stood the pretty little bedstead, shrouded by closely drawn white
curtains. Philip Sheldon walked slowly across the room, and drew aside
one of the curtains. He had looked upon the death-sleep of Charlotte
Halliday's father, why not upon hers?
She was not there! Those closely drawn curtains shrouded only the bed on
which she had slept in the tranquil slumbers of her careless girlhood.
That cold lifeless form, whose rigid outline Philip Sheldon had steeled
himself to see, had no place here.
He put his hand to his head, bewildered.
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