The door opened gently, and Miss Alcott's grey head appeared.
"The doctor!" she said, just audibly.
Buntingford followed her downstairs, and found himself presently in
Alcott's study, alone with a country doctor well known to him, a man who
had pulled out his own teeth in childhood, had attended his father and
grandfather before him, and carried in his loyal breast the secrets and
the woes of a whole countryside.
They grasped hands in silence.
"You know who she is?" said Buntingford quietly.
"I understand that she tells Mr. Alcott that she was Mrs. Philip Bliss,
that she left you fifteen years ago, and that you believed her dead?"
He saw Buntingford shrink.
"At times I did--yes, at times I did--but we won't go into that. Is she
ill--really ill?"
Ramsay spoke deliberately, after a minute's thought:
"Yes, she is probably very ill. The heart is certainly in a dangerous
state. I thought she would have slipped away this morning, when they
called me in--the collapse was so serious. She is not a strong woman, and
she had a bad attack of influenza last week.
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