woman's weaker will into something like cunning. For the rest Elizabeth
had a very fair figure, but lacked her sister's rounded loveliness,
though the two were so curiously alike that at a distance you might well
mistake the one for the other. One might almost fancy that nature had
experimented upon Elizabeth before she made up her mind to produce
Beatrice, just to get the lines and distances. The elder sister was
to the other what the pale unfinished model of clay is to the polished
statue in ivory and gold.

"Oh, my God! my God!" groaned the old man; "look, they have got them
on the stretchers. They are both dead. Oh, Beatrice! Beatrice! and only
this morning I spoke harshly to her."

"Don't be so foolish, father," said Elizabeth sharply. "They may only be
insensible."

"Ah, ah," he answered; "it does not matter to you, _you_ don't care
about your sister. You are jealous of her. But I love her, though we do
not understand each other. Here they come. Don't stand staring there. Go
and see that the blankets and things are hot. Stop, doctor, tell me, is
she dead?"

"How can I tell till I have seen her?" the doctor answered, roughly
shaking him off, and passing through the door.

Bryngelly Vicarage was a very simply constructed house. On entering the
visitor found himself in a passage with doors to the right and left.
That to the right led to the sitting-room, that to the left to the
dining-room, both of them long, low and narrow chambers. Following the
passage down for some seven paces, it terminated in another which ran