CHAPTER IV.
THE LAST STAGE.
The post-horses--which had been well fed, but accommodated somewhat poorly in stable and barn--were quite ready to go on next morning; but Lord Maulevrier was not able to leave his room, where her ladyship remained in close attendance upon him.

The hills and valleys were white with snow, but there was none falling, and Mr.Evans, the elderly surgeon from Ambleside, rode over to Great Langdale on his elderly cob to look at Robert Haswell, and was called in to see Lord Maulevrier.

Her ladyship had spoken lightly of his skill on the previous evening, but any doctor is better than none, so this feeble little personage was allowed to feel his lordship's pulse, and look at his lordship's tongue.
His opinion, never too decidedly given, was a little more hazy than usual on this occasion, perhaps because of a certain awfulness, to unaccustomed eyes, in Lady Maulevrier's proud bearing.

He said that his lordship was low, very low, and that the pulse was more irregular than he liked, but he committed himself no further than this, and went away, promising to send such pills and potions as were appropriate to the patient's condition.
A boy rode the same pony over to Langdale later in the afternoon with the promised medicines.
Throughout the short winter day, which seemed terribly long in the stillness and solitude of Great Langdale, Lady Maulevrier kept watch in the sick-room, Steadman going in and out in constant attendance upon his master--save for one half-hour only, which her ladyship passed in the parlour below, in conversation with the landlady, a very serious conversation, as indicated by Mrs.Smithson's grave and somewhat troubled looks when she left her ladyship; but a good deal of her trouble may have been caused by her anxiety about her brother, who was pronounced by the doctor to be 'much the same.' At eleven o'clock that night a mounted messenger was sent off to Ambleside in hot haste to fetch Mr.Evans, who came to the inn to find Lady Maulevrier kneeling beside her husband's bed, while Steadman stood with a troubled countenance at a respectful distance.
The room was dimly lighted by a pair of candles burning on a table near the window, and at some distance from the old four-post bedstead, shaded by dark moreen curtains.

The surgeon looked round the room, and then fumbled in his pockets for his spectacles, without the aid of which the outside world presented itself to him under a blurred and uncertain aspect.
He put on his spectacles, and moved towards the bed; but the first glance in that direction showed him what had happened.