As he was
going, Emma said to him:
'Will you tell them to keep away--all the people in the house?'
'This is your own room?'
'I live here with my sister.'
'I will ask them to respect your wish. The body must stay here for
the present, though.'
'Oh yes, yes, I know.'
'Is your sister at home?'
'She will be soon. Please tell them not to come here.'
She was alone again with the dead. It cost her great efforts of mind
to convince herself that Mutimer really had breathed his last; it
seemed to her but a moment since she heard him speak, heard him
laugh; was not a trace of the laugh even now discernible on his
countenance? How was it possible for life to vanish in this way? She
constantly touched him, spoke to him. It was incredible that he
should not be able to hear her.
Her love for him was immeasurable. Bitterness she had long since
overcome, and she had thought that love, too, was gone with it. She
had deceived herself. Her heart, incredible as it may seem, had even
known a kind of hope--how else could she have borne the life which
fate laid upon her?--the hope that is one with love, that asks
nothing of the reason, nor yields to reason's contumely. He had been
smitten dead at the moment that she loved him dearest.
Her sister Kate came in. She had been spending the day with friends
in another part of London.
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