— dreading, also, to hear the stern voice of Judge Pyncheon from below stairs, chiding her delay, — she crept slowly, a pale, grief-stricken figure, a dismal shape of woman, with almost torpid limbs, slowly to her brother’s door, and knocked!
There was no reply.
And how should there have been? Her hand, tremulous with the shrinking purpose which directed it, had smitten so feebly against the door that the sound could hardly have gone inward. She knocked again. Still no response!
Nor was it to be wondered at. She had struck with the entire force of her heart’s vibration, communicating, by some subtile magnetism, her own terror to the summons. Clifford would turn his face to the pillow, and cover his head beneath the bedclothes,