'Would not you like to see the Doctor, Miss Maud?' asked Mary Quince.
The question roused me a little.
'Thank you, Mary; yes, I must see him.'
And so, in a few minutes, I did. He was very respectful, very sad,
semi-undertakerlike, in air and countenance, but quite explicit. I heard
that my dear father 'had died palpably from the rupture of some great
vessel near the heart.' The disease had, no doubt, been 'long established,
and is in its nature incurable.' It is 'consolatory in these cases that in
the act of dissolution, which is instantaneous, there can be no suffering.'
These, and a few more remarks, were all he had to offer; and having had his
fee from Mrs. Rusk, he, with a respectful melancholy, vanished.
I returned to my room, and broke into paroxysms of grief, and after an hour
or more grew more tranquil.
From Mrs. Rusk I learned that he had seemed very well--better than usual,
indeed--that night, and that on her return from the study with the book
he required, he was noting down, after his wont, some passages which
illustrated the text on which he was employing himself. He took the book,
detaining her in the room, and then mounting on a chair to take down
another book from a shelf, he had fallen, with the dreadful crash I had
heard, dead upon the floor.
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