They wavered and then fell. An uneasy, mirthless laugh cracked in his
throat; then his lip quivered ever so slightly--Brooks could have
sworn to it. His hand shook as it went up to fumble the square chin in
evident perplexity. For a moment Thomas Braddock stood there,
reflecting, swayed by an emotion so unexpected that he was a long time
in accounting for it. Indecision succeeded the arrogant assurance that
had marked his advances. He looked up quickly, suspecting the lie that
might have been offered as an excuse to get rid of him.
"Are you lying to me?" he demanded.
"Sir!"
Braddock's mind, long acute, worked swiftly. He went back of the
servant's statement with an intelligence that grasped the true
conditions quite as plainly as if they had been laid bare before him.
Christine was ill. No physician had been called. He knew what the
servant could not, by any chance, have known. He knew why Mary
Braddock sat up with her daughter. A doctor? As if a doctor could
prescribe for the affliction that beset her! Too well he now
understood what had transpired in that upstairs room. A thing of
horror had come to rack the soul of that happy, beautiful girl--had
come suddenly because the time was ripe.
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