"How dared you leave the room, Jepson? I hired you to wait on the Miss Campbells and myself."
"I thought Mrs. Campbell looked very ill, ma'am."
"You are here to obey orders, not to think. And I am Mrs. Campbell, the other is Mrs. Robert. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ma'am."
For some hours Theodora lay on the sofa in deep sleep, or in some other form of oblivion. She came back to consciousness with the feeling of one shipwrecked on a dark, desolate land, and after a little sobbing cry, went upstairs to try and dress for dinner. A depressing anxiety, a horror of the great darkness from which she had just returned was on her, and as soon as her exhausting toilet was over, she went back to the parlor, and lifting a book sat down at a small table with it in her hand.
Isabel, who was with her mother, heard both the ascent and descent, and directed her attention to it. "Dora has been dressing for dinner," she said. "Her sickness has not lasted long."
"There was nothing the matter with her."
"You are looking very well, mother, but I must change my gown. Why not go and question Dora about the minister's visit? She ought to tell you the why and the wherefore of it."
"She shall tell me. I will make the inquiry at once."
Theodora was sitting with her elbows on the small table, her head in her hands and the open pages of the book below her heavy eyes, when the door was imperiously opened and Mrs. Campbell entered.