Baby gave a shivering cry.
"Oh—but, Jani, no one can call back the dead!"
Jani was crouching before the hearth. Without replying, she set her little tripod, and balanced the earthen pan on the top of it. In this lay divers herbs and other substances unknown to the watcher. A fine blue fume, with an aromatic odour, began to rise in the room.
Suddenly Jani looked up from her manipulations and spoke again. It was a belated answer to the girl's expostulation.
"Who knows," said she, in her slow difficult English, "where the spirits dwell, or how close they live to us? I will pray my gods! And you, Missie Sahib, pray yours, pray hard that she may have her wish."
The aromatic steam rose and circled. Jani drew a bag from her bosom and began to shake its contents over the pan.
"See, missie, see," she went on, her eyes fixed, "this is the good medicine. Behold, Missie Sahib shall dream, and in her dream, she shall be happy." She folded her hands, rocked herself backwards and forwards, low croonings and mutterings escaping from her lips. Now, like her who soothes a babe to rest, now with a passionate hypnotic fervour as before one of her own world-old shrines. Once she called sharply to Aspasia again:
"Pray, pray!"
Then Aspasia folded her hands, and obediently began to pray. Her first thought was to plead that she and her aunt be protected against what evil might be called into being by these unholy Eastern doings. She heard Rosamond turn in the bed, and saw dreamily, through the floating mists, that she was lying with her eyes fixed on the burning charcoal. Then the girl's thoughts began to wander. She would find herself earnestly petitioning for something, wanting something; and suddenly become aware that she knew not what it was. From where she sat the illumined portrait of Harry English looked down upon her: as once before in the dusk, it now, through the vapours, began to assume airs of life; seemed to smile, to frown. The lips quivered; then, she told herself, they spoke; the very words were ringing in her ears.
"In God's name, tell me, who is she mourning for?" It was no longer a picture, it was a living presence. Baby's eyelids drooped; her ideas grew less and less coherent. Finally it was the merest wisps of consciousness that floated through her brain. The old house seemed to hold its breath as in expectation. The stillness seemed to become palpable.