Glasgow Ellen Anderson Gholson
The Builders
"I've brought you a cup of tea. Couldn't you manage to drink it?"
"Yes, I'd like it." There was something touching in the way Mrs. Timberlake seemed to include her in the distress of the family – to assume that her relation to Letty was not merely the professional one of a nurse to a patient.
Stepping cautiously, as if she were in reality treading on ruins, the housekeeper crossed the room and placed the tray on the table at the bedside. While she leaned over to pour out the tea, she murmured in a rasping whisper, "Mammy Riah is crying so I wouldn't let her come in. Can Letty hear us?"
"No, she is in a stupor. She has been moaning a good deal, but she is too weak to keep it up. I've just given her some medicine."
Her gaze went back to the child, who stirred and gave a short panting sob. In her small transparent face, which was flushed with fever, the blue circle about the mouth seemed to start out suddenly like the mark of a blow. She lay very straight and slim under the cover, as if she had shrunken to half her size since her illness, and her soft, fine hair, drawn smoothly back from her waxen forehead, clung as flat and close as a cap.
"I'd scarcely know her," murmured the housekeeper, with a catch in her throat.
"If she passes the crisis she will pick up quickly. I've seen children as ill as this who were playing about the room a few days afterwards." Caroline tried to speak brightly, but in spite of her efforts, there was a note of awe in her voice.
"Is it really as grave as we fear, Miss Meade?"
Caroline met the question frankly. "It is very grave, Mrs. Timberlake, but with a child, as the doctor told me a minute ago, there is always hope of a sudden change for the better."
"Have you said anything to Angelica?"
"She was in here a little while ago, just before the doctor's visit, but I tried not to alarm her. She is so easily made ill."
The windows were wide open, and Mrs. Timberlake went over to the nearest one, and stood gazing out on the lawn and the half-bared elms. A light wind was blowing, and while she stood there, she shivered and drew the knitted purple cape she wore closer about her shoulders. Beyond the interlacing boughs the sunlight streamed in a golden shower on the grass, which was still bright and green, and now and then a few sparkling drops were scattered through the broad windows, and rippled over the blanket on Letty's bed. "It is hard to get used to these new-fangled ways," observed the housekeeper presently as she moved back to the fire. "In my days we'd have thought a hot room and plenty of whiskey toddy the best things for pneumonia."
"The doctor told me to keep the windows wide open."
"I heard him say so, but don't you think you had better put on a wrap? It feels chilly."
"Oh, no, I'm quite warm." Caroline finished the cup of tea as she spoke and gave back the tray. "That did me good. I needed it."
"I thought so." From the tone in which the words were uttered Caroline understood that the housekeeper was gaining time. "Are you sure you oughtn't to say something to Angelica?"
"Say something? You mean tell her how ill Letty is? Why, the doctor gave me my instructions. He said positively that I was not to alarm Mrs. Blackburn."
"I don't think he understood. He doesn't know that she still expects to be in the tableaux to-night."
For an instant Caroline stared back at her without a word; then she said in an incredulous whisper, "Oh, she wouldn't – she couldn't!"
"She feels it to be her duty – her sacred duty, she has just told me so. You see, I don't think she in the least realizes. She seems confident that Letty is better."
"How can she be? She was in here less than an hour ago."
"And she said nothing about to-night?"
"Not a word. I had forgotten about the tableaux, but, of course, I shouldn't have mentioned them. I tried to be cheerful, to keep up her spirit – but she must have seen. She couldn't help seeing."
The housekeeper's lips twitched, and she moistened them nervously. "If you knew Angelica as well as I do," she answered flatly, "you'd realize that she can help seeing anything on earth except the thing she wants to see."
"Then you must tell her," rejoined Caroline positively. "Someone must tell her."
"I couldn't." Mrs. Timberlake was as emphatic as Caroline. "And what's more she wouldn't believe me if I did. She'd pretend it was some of my crankiness. You just wait till you try to convince Angelica of something she doesn't want to believe."
"I'll tell her if you think I ought to – or perhaps it would be better to go straight to Mr. Blackburn?"
Mrs. Timberlake coughed. "Well, I reckon if anybody can convince her, David can," she retorted. "He doesn't mince matters."
"The night nurse comes on at six o'clock, and just as soon as she gets here I'll go downstairs to Mr. Blackburn. That will be time enough, won't it?"
"Oh, yes, she isn't going until half-past seven. I came to you because I heard her order the car."
When she had gone Caroline turned back to her watch; but her heart was beating so rapidly that for a moment she confused it with Letty's feverish breathing. She reproached herself bitterly for not speaking frankly to Mrs. Blackburn, for trying to spare her; and yet, recalling the last interview, she scarcely knew what she could have said. "It seemed too cruel to tell her that Letty might not live through the night," she thought. "It seemed too cruel – but wasn't that just what Mrs. Timberlake meant when she said that Mr. Blackburn 'wouldn't mince matters?'"
The night nurse was five minutes late, and during these minutes, the suspense, the responsibility, became almost unbearable. It was as if the whole burden of Angelica's ignorance, of her apparent heartlessness, rested on Caroline's shoulders. "If she had gone I could never have forgiven myself," she was thinking when Miss Webster, the nurse, entered with her brisk, ingratiating manner.
"I stopped to speak to Mrs. Blackburn," she explained. "She tells me Letty is better." Her fine plain face, from which a wealth of burnished red hair was brushed severely back, beamed with interest and sympathy. Though she had been nursing private cases for ten years, she had not lost the energy and enthusiasm of a pupil nurse in the hospital. Her tall, erect figure, with its tightly confined hips, bent back, like a steel spring, whenever she stooped over the child.
Caroline shook her head without replying, for Letty had opened her eyes and was gazing vacantly at the ceiling. "Do you want anything, darling? Miss Webster is going to sit with you a minute while I run downstairs to speak to father."
But the child had closed her eyes again, and it was impossible to tell whether or not the words had penetrated the stupor in which she had been lying for the last two or three hours. A few moments later, as Caroline descended the staircase and crossed the hall to Blackburn's library, the memory of Letty's look floated between her and the object of her errand. "If Mrs. Blackburn could see that she would know," she told herself while she raised her hand to the panel of the door. "She couldn't help knowing."
At the knock Blackburn called to her to enter, and when she pushed the door open and crossed the threshold, she saw that he was standing by the window, looking out at the afterglow. Beyond the terrace and the dark spires of the junipers, the autumn fields were changing from brown to purple under the flower-like pink of the sky. Somewhere in the distance one of the Airedale terriers was whining softly.
As soon as he caught sight of her, Blackburn crossed the floor with a rapid stride, and stood waiting for her to speak. Though he did not open his lips, she saw his face grow white, and the corners of his mouth contract suddenly as if a tight cord were drawn. For the first time she noticed that he had a way of narrowing his eyes when he stared fixedly.
"There hasn't been any change, Mr. Blackburn. I wish to speak to you about something else."
From the sharp breath that he drew, she could measure the unutterable relief that swept over him.
"You say there hasn't been any change?"
"Not since morning. She is, of course, very ill, but with a child," she had repeated the phrase so often that it seemed to have lost its meaning, "the crisis sometimes comes very quickly. If we can manage to keep up her strength for the next twenty-four hours, I believe the worst will be over."
His figure, as he stood there in the dim light, was impressed with a new vividness on her mind, and it was as he looked at this moment that she always remembered him.
"Do you wish anything?" he asked. "Is everything being done that is possible?"
"Everything. The doctor is coming to spend the night, and I shall sit up with Miss Webster."
"But don't you need rest? Can you go without sleep and not lose your strength?"
She shook her head. "I couldn't sleep until she is better."
A look of gratitude leaped to his eyes, and she became aware, through some subtle wave of perception, that for the first time, she had assumed a definite image in his thoughts.
"Thank you," he answered simply, but his tone was full of suppressed feeling.
While he looked at her the old prejudice, the old suspicion and resentment faded from her face, and she gazed back at him with trusting and friendly eyes. Though she was pale and tired, and there were lines of worry and sleeplessness in her forehead, she appeared to him the incarnation of helpfulness. The spirit of goodness and gentleness shone in her smile, and ennobled her slight womanly figure, which drooped a little in its trim uniform. She looked as if she would fight to the death, would wear herself to a shadow, for any one she loved, or for any cause in which she believed.
"I came to ask you," she said very quietly, "if it would not be better to tell Mrs. Blackburn the truth about Letty?"
He started in amazement. "But she knows, doesn't she?"
"She doesn't know everything. She thinks Letty is better. Miss Webster has been talking to her."
"And you think she ought to be warned?"
Her question had evidently puzzled him.
"I think it is unfair to leave her in ignorance. She does not in the least realize Letty's condition. Mrs. Timberlake tells me she heard her order the car for half-past seven."
"Order the car?" He seemed to be groping through a fog of uncertainty. If only heaven had granted intuition to men, thought Caroline impatiently, how much time might be saved!
"To go to the tableaux. You know the tableaux are to-night."
"Yes, I had forgotten." His tone changed and grew positive. "Of course she must be told. I will tell her."
"That is all." She turned away as she spoke, and laid her hand on the knob of the door. "Mrs. Timberlake and I both felt that I ought to speak to you."
"I am glad you did." He had opened the door for her, and following her a step or two into the hall, he added gratefully, "I can never thank you enough."
Without replying, she hurried to the staircase, and ran up the steps to the second storey. When she reached the door of the nursery, she glanced round before entering, and saw that Blackburn had already come upstairs and was on his way to Angelica's room. While she watched, she saw him knock, and then open the door and cross the threshold with his rapid step.
Miss Webster was sitting by Letty's bed, and after a look at the child, Caroline threw herself on the couch and closed her eyes in the hope that she might fall asleep. Though she was profoundly relieved by her conversation with Blackburn, she was still anxious about Angelica, and impatient to hear how she had borne the shock. As the time dragged on, with the interminable passage of the minutes in a sickroom, she found it impossible to lie there in silence any longer, and rising from the couch, she glanced at the clock before going to her room to wash her hands and straighten her hair for dinner. It was exactly half-past seven, and a few minutes later, when she had finished her simple preparations, and was passing the window on her way to the hall, she heard the sound of a motor in the circular drive. "I suppose they forgot to tell John," she thought, "or can it be the doctor so soon?"
The hall was empty when she entered it; but before she had reached the head of the stairs, a door opened and shut in the left wing, and the housekeeper joined her. At the bend in the staircase, beneath a copy of the Sistine Madonna, which had been crowded out of the drawing-room, the elder woman stopped and laid a detaining hand on Caroline's arm. Even through the starched sleeve her grasp felt dry and feverish.
"Miss Meade, did you get a chance to speak to David?"
"Why, yes, I spoke to him. I went straight down as soon as Miss Webster came on duty."
"Did he say he would tell Angelica?"
"He came up at once to tell her. I saw him go into her room."
Mrs. Timberlake glanced helplessly up at the Sistine Madonna. "Well, I don't know what he could have said," she answered, "for Angelica has gone. That was her motor you heard leaving the door."
CHAPTER XI
The Sacred Cult
WHEN Caroline looked back upon it afterwards, she remembered that dinner as the most depressing meal of her life. While she ate her food, with the dutiful determination of the trained nurse who realizes that she is obliged to keep up her strength, her gaze wandered for diversion to the soft blues and pinks on the wall. The tapestries were so fresh that she wondered if they were modern. More than ever the airy figure of Spring, floating in primrose-coloured draperies through a flowery grove, reminded her of Angelica. There was the same beauty of line, the same look of sweetness and grace, the same amber hair softly parted under a wreath of pale grey-green leaves. The very vagueness of the features, which left all except the pensive outline to the imagination, seemed to increase rather than diminish this resemblance.
"Have you ever noticed how much that figure is like Mrs. Blackburn?" she asked, turning to the housekeeper, for the silence was beginning to embarrass her. Mary was away and neither Blackburn nor Mrs. Timberlake had uttered a word during the four short courses, which Patrick served as noiselessly as if he were eluding an enemy.
Mrs. Timberlake lifted her eyes to the wall. "Yes, it's the living image of her, if you stand far enough off. I reckon that's why she bought it."
Blackburn, who was helping himself to coffee, glanced up to remark, "I forgot to take sugar, Patrick," and when the tray was brought back, he selected a lump of sugar and broke it evenly in half. If he had heard the question, there was no hint of it in his manner.
Having finished a pear she had been forcing herself to eat, Caroline looked inquiringly from Blackburn to Mrs. Timberlake. If only somebody would speak! If only Mary, with her breezy chatter, would suddenly return from New York! From a long mirror over the sideboard Caroline's reflection, very pale, very grave, stared back at her like a face seen in a fog. "I look like a ghost," she thought. "No wonder they won't speak to me. After all, they are silent because they can think of nothing to say." Unlike in everything else, it occurred to her that Blackburn and the housekeeper had acquired, through dissimilar experiences, the same relentless sincerity of mind. They might be blunt, but they were undeniably honest; and contrasted with the false values and the useless accessories of the house, this honesty impressed her as entirely admirable. The brooding anxiety in Blackburn's face did not change even when he smiled at her, and then rose and stood waiting while she passed before him out of the dining-room. It wasn't, she realized, that he was deliberately inconsiderate or careless in manner; it was merely that the idea of pretending had never occurred to him. The thought was in her mind, when he spoke her name abruptly, and she turned to find that he had followed her to the staircase.
"Miss Meade, I have to see a man on business for a half hour. I shall be in the library. If there is any change, will you send for me?"
She bowed. "Yes, I shall be with Letty all the time."
"As soon as Baker goes, I'll come up. I asked the doctor to spend the night."
"He said he couldn't get here before ten or eleven, but to telephone if we needed him," broke in Mrs. Timberlake. "Mammy Riah has gone to the nursery, Miss Meade. Is there any reason why she shouldn't stay?"
"None in the world." As Caroline turned away and ascended the stairs, she remembered that there had been no question of Angelica. "I wish I could understand. I wish I knew what it means," she said to herself in perplexity. She felt smothered by the uncertainty, the coldness, the reserve of the people about her. Everybody seemed to speak with tight lips, as if in fear lest something might escape that would help to clear away the obscurity. It was all so different from The Cedars, where every thought, every joy, every grief, was lived in a common centre of experience.
When she opened the nursery door, Mammy Riah glanced up from the fire, where she was crouching over the low fender. "I'se mortal feared, honey," she muttered, while she held out her wrinkled palms to the blaze. She had flung a shawl of crimson wool over her shoulders, and the splash of barbaric colour, with her high Indian cheek bones and the low crooning sound of her voice, gave her a resemblance to some Oriental crooked image of Destiny. As the wind rocked the elms on the lawn, she shivered, and rolled her glittering eyes in the direction of Letty's bed.
"Don't give up, Mammy Riah," said Caroline consolingly. "You have nursed children through worse illnesses than this."
"Yas'm, I know I is, but dar wan' noner dese yer signs dat I see now." The flames leaped up suddenly, illuminating her stooping figure in the brilliant shawl with an intense and sinister glow. "I ain't sayin' nuttin'. Naw'm, I ain' lettin' on dat I'se seen whut I'se seen; but dar's somebody done thowed a spell on dis place jes ez sho' ez you live. Dar wuz a ring out yonder on de grass de fust thing dis mawnin', en de fros' ain' never so much ez teched it. Naw, honey, de fros' hit ain' never come a nigh hit. Patrick he seed hit, too, but he ain' let on nuttin' about hit needer, dough de misery is done cotched him in bofe er his feet."
"You don't really think we're conjured, Mammy?"
Mammy Riah cast a secretive glance over her shoulder, and the dramatic instinct of her race awoke in every fibre of her body as she made a vague, mournful gesture over the ashes. "I 'members, honey, I 'members," she muttered ominously. Though Caroline had been familiar with such superstitions from infancy, there was a vividness in these mysteries and invocations which excited her imagination. She knew, as she assured herself, that there "wasn't anything in it"; yet, in spite of her reason, the image of the old woman muttering her incantations over the fire, haunted her like a prophetic vision of evil.
Turning away she went over to Letty's bed, and laid her small, cool fingers on the child's pulse.
"Has there been any change?"
Miss Webster shook her head. "She hasn't stirred."
"I don't like her pulse."
"It seemed a little stronger after the last medicine, but it was getting more rapid a minute ago. That old woman has been talking a lot of heathen nonsense," she added in a whisper. "She says she found a conjure ball at the front door this morning. I am from the Middle West, and it sounds dreadfully uncanny to me."
"I know. She thinks we are conjured. That's just their way. Don't notice her."
"Well, I hope she isn't going to sit up all night with me." Then, as Mammy Riah glanced suspiciously round, and began shaking her head until the shadows danced like witches, Miss Webster added in a more distinct tone, "Is Mrs. Blackburn still hopeful? She is so sweet that I've quite lost my heart to her."
"She wasn't at dinner," answered Caroline, and going back to the fire, she sat down in a chintz-covered chair, with deep arms, and shaded her eyes from the flames. In some incomprehensible way Mammy Riah and Blackburn and Angelica, all seemed to hover in spirit round the glowing hearth.
She was still sitting there, and her hand had not dropped from her eyes, when Blackburn came in and crossed the floor to a chair at the foot of Letty's bed. After a whispered word or two with Miss Webster, he opened a book he had brought with him, and held it under the night lamp on the candle-stand. When a quarter of an hour had passed Caroline noticed that he had not turned a page, and that he appeared to be reading and re-reading the same paragraph, with the dogged determination which was his general attitude toward adversity. His face was worn and lined, and there were heavy shadows under his eyes; but he gave her still the impression of a man who could not be conquered by events. "There is something in him, some vein of iron, that you can't break, you can't even bend," she thought. She remembered that her father had once told her that after the worst had happened you began to take things easier; and this casual recollection seemed to give her a fresh understanding of Blackburn. "Father knew life," she thought, "I wonder what he would have seen in all this? I wonder how he would have liked Mr. Blackburn and his political theories?" The profile outlined darkly against the shade of the night lamp, held her gaze in spite of the effort she made, now and then, to avert it. It was a strong face, and seen in this light, with the guard of coldness dropped, it was a noble one. Thought and feeling and idealism were there, and the serenity, not of the philosopher, but of the soldier. He had fought hard, she saw, and some deep instinct told her that he had conquered. A phrase read somewhere long ago returned to her as clearly as if it were spoken aloud. "He had triumphed over himself." That was the meaning of his look. That was the thought for which she had been groping. He had triumphed over himself.
She started up quickly, and ran with noiseless steps to the bed, for Letty had opened her eyes and cried out.
"Is she awake?" asked Blackburn, and closing his book, he moved nearer.
Caroline's hand was on Letty's pulse, and she replied without looking at him, "She is getting restless. Miss Webster, is it time for the medicine?"
"It is not quite half-past ten. That must be the doctor now at the door."
Rising hurriedly, Blackburn went out into the hall, and when he came back, Doctor Boland was with him. As Caroline left the bedside and went to the chair by the fire, she heard Blackburn ask sharply, "What does the change mean, doctor?" and Doctor Boland's soothing response, "Wait a while. Wait a while." Then he stooped to make an examination, while Miss Webster prepared a stimulant, and Letty moaned aloud as if she were frightened. A clock outside was just striking eleven when the doctor said in a subdued tone, too low to be natural, yet too clear to be a whisper, "Her pulse is getting weaker." He bent over the bed, and as Caroline stood up, she saw Letty's face as if it were in a dream – the flat, soft hair, the waxen forehead, the hard, bright eyes, and the bluish circle about the small, quivering mouth. Then she crossed the floor like a white shadow, and in a little while the room sank back into stillness. Only the dropping of the ashes, and the low crooning of Mammy Riah, disturbed the almost unendurable silence.
For the first hour, while she sat there, Caroline felt that the discipline of her training had deserted her, and that she wanted to scream. Then gradually the stillness absorbed her, and there swept over her in waves a curious feeling of lightness and buoyancy, as if her mind had detached itself from her body, and had become a part of the very pulse and rhythm of the life that surrounded her. She had always lived vividly, with the complete reaction to the moment of a vital and sensitive nature; and she became aware presently that her senses were responsive to every external impression of the room and the night. She heard the wind in the elms, the whispering of the flames, the muttering of Mammy Riah, the short, fretful moans that came from Letty's bed; and all these things seemed a part, not of the world outside, but of her own inner consciousness. Even the few pale stars shining through the window, and the brooding look of the room, with its flickering firelight and its motionless figures, appeared thin and unsubstantial as if they possessed no objective reality. And out of this vagueness and evanescence of the things that surrounded her, there stole over her a certainty, as wild and untenable as a superstition of Mammy Riah's, that there was a meaning in the smallest incident of the night, and that she was approaching one of the cross-roads of life.
A coal dropped on the hearth; she looked up with a start, and found Blackburn's eyes upon her. "Miss Meade, have you the time? My watch has run down."
She glanced at the little clock on the mantelpiece. "It is exactly one o'clock."
"Thank you." His gaze passed away from her, and she leaned back in her chair, while the sense of strangeness and unreality vanished as quickly as it had come. The old negress was mending the fire with kindling wood, and every now and then she paused and shook her head darkly at the flames. "I ain' sayin' nuttin', but I knows, honey," she repeated.
"Hadn't you better go to bed, Mammy Riah?" asked Caroline pityingly.
"Naw'm, I 'ouldn't better git to baid. I'se got ter watch."
"There isn't anything that you can do, and I'll call you, if there is a change."
But the old woman shook her head stubbornly. "I'se got ter watch, honey," she replied. "Dat's one er dem ole squitch-owls out dar now. Ain't he hollerin' jes like he knows sump'n?"
Her mind was plainly wandering, and seeing that persuasion was useless, Caroline left her to her crooning grief, and went over to Letty's bed. As she passed the door, it opened without sound, as if it were pushed by a ghost, and Mrs. Timberlake looked in with the question, "Is she any better, doctor?"
The doctor raised his head and glanced round at her. "She is no better," he answered. "Her pulse gets worse all the time."
Unconsciously, while they spoke, they had drawn together around Letty's bed, and stooping over, Caroline listened with a rapidly beating heart, to the child's breathing. Then, dropping on her knees, she laid her arms about the pillow, as if she would hold the fragile little body to life with all her strength.
She was kneeling there, it seemed to her hours later, when the door swung wide on its hinges, and Angelica, in her white robes, with the wreath of leaves on her hair, paused on the threshold like some Luca della Robbia angel. Her golden hair made a light on her temples; her eyes were deep and starry with triumph; and a glow hung about her that was like the rosy incandescence of the stage. For a minute she stood there; then, flushed, crowned, radiant, she swept into the room.
Blackburn had not lifted his head; there was no sign in his stooping figure that he heard her when she cried out.
"Is Letty really so ill? Is she worse, Doctor Boland?"
The doctor moved a step from the bed, and reached out a protecting hand. "She has been getting weaker."
"I'd sit down and wait, if I were you, Angelica," said Mrs. Timberlake, pushing forward a chair. "There isn't anything else that you can do now."
But, without noticing her, Angelica had dropped to her knees at Caroline's side. A cry that was half a sob burst from her lips, and lifting her head, she demanded with passionate reproach and regret, "Why did nobody tell me? Oh, why did he let me go?" The words seemed driven from her against her will, and when she had uttered them, she fell forward across the foot of the bed, with her bare arms outstretched before her.
The doctor bent over her, and instinctively, as he did so, he glanced up at Blackburn, who stood, white and silent, looking down on his wife with inscrutable eyes. He uttered no word of defence, he made no movement to help her, and Caroline felt suddenly that the sympathy around him had rushed back like an eddying wave to Angelica. "If he would only speak, if he would only defend himself," she thought almost angrily. Without turning, she knew that Angelica was led to the couch by the window, and she heard Mrs. Timberlake say in unemotional tones, "I reckon we'd better give her a dose of ammonia."
The voices were silent, and except for Mrs. Blackburn's sobs and Letty's rapid breathing, there was no sound in the room. Suddenly from somewhere outside there floated the plaintive whining of the dog that Caroline had heard in the afternoon. "He must be missing Mary," she found herself thinking, while Mammy Riah murmured uneasily from the hearth, "Hit's a bad sign, w'en a dawg howls in de daid er night."
The hours dragged on like eternity, and without moving, without stirring or lifting her eyes, Caroline knelt there, pouring her strength into the life of the unconscious child. Every thought, every feeling, every throbbing nerve, was concentrated upon this solitary consuming purpose – "Letty must live." Science had done all it could; it remained now for hope and courage to fight the losing fight to the end. "I will never give up," she said sternly under her breath, "I will never give up." If hope and courage could save, if it were possible for the human will to snatch the victory from death, she felt, deep down in the passionate depths of her heart, that, while she watched over her, Letty could not die.
And then gradually, while she prayed, a change as light as a shadow stole over the face of the child. The little features grew less waxen, the glittering eyes melted to a dewy warmth, and it seemed that the blue circles faded slowly, and even the close brown hair looked less dull and lifeless. As the minutes passed, Caroline held her breath in torture, lest the faintest sound, the slightest movement, might check the invisible beneficent current.
At last, when the change had come, she rose from her knees, and with her hand on Letty's pulse, looked up at Blackburn.
