The place, though poor and narrow, was not squalid. Sir George could see
so much by the light which shone from a window and fell on a group of
five or six persons, who stood about the nearest door and talked in low,
excited voices. He had a good view of one man's face, and read in it
gloom and anger. Then the group made way for the girl, eyeing her, as he
thought, with pity and a sort of deference; and cursing the folly that
had brought him into such a place and situation, wondering what on
earth it all meant or in what it would end, he followed her into
the house.
She opened a door on the right-hand side of the narrow passage, and led
the way into a long, low room. For a moment he saw no more than two
lights on a distant table, and kneeling at a chair beside them a woman
with grey dishevelled hair, who seemed to be praying, her face hidden.
Then his gaze, sinking instinctively, fell on a low bed between him and
the woman; and there rested on a white sheet, and on the solemn
outlines--so certain in their rigidity, so unmistakable by human
eyes--of a body laid out for burial.