She followed him, and stood without flinching one iota, while he clipped away the jagged pieces of flesh, covered the long gash with adhesive plaster, and carefully bandaged the whole.
“Salome, you must dismiss all idea of starting to-morrow, for indeed it would not be safe for you to travel alone, with your arm in this condition. It may give you much trouble and suffering.”
“Which, of course, nolens volens, I must bear as best I may; but, so surely as I live to see daylight, I shall start, even if I knew I should have to stop en route and bury my pretty arm, and be forced to buy a cork one, wherewith to gesticulate gracefully when I die as ‘Azucena.’ There! thank you, Dr. Grey; of course you are very good,—you always are. Shall I bid you all good-by now, or wait till morning? Better 338 make my adieu to-night, so that I may not disturb the matutinal slumbers of the household.”
There was a dangerous, starry sparkle in her eyes, that he would not venture to defy, and, sighing heavily, he answered,—
“I shall accompany you to the depôt, and place you under the protection of the conductor.”
“I do not desire to give you that trouble, and—”
“Hush! Do not grieve me any more than you have already done, by your hasty, unkind, unfriendly speeches. I shall see you in the morning.”
He left the room abruptly, to conceal the distress which he did not desire her to discover; and having found Muriel and Miss Dexter, Salome bade them good-by, requested them not to disturb themselves next morning on her account, and called the children to her room.
For two hours they sat beside her on the lounge, crying over her impending departure, but when she had promised to take them as far as the depôt, their thoughts followed other currents, and very soon after, both slumbered soundly in their trundle-bed.
With her cheek resting on her hand, Salome sat looking at them, noting the glossiness of their curling hair, the flush on their round faces, the regular breathing of peaceful childhood’s sleep. Once she could have wept, and would have knelt and prayed over them; but now her own overmastering misery had withered all the tenderness in her heart, and, while her eyes of flesh rested on the orphans, her mental vision was filled with the figure of that gray-haired woman hanging on Dr. Grey’s arm. In a dull, cold, abstract way, she hoped that the little ones would be happy,—how could they be otherwise when fortune had committed them to Dr. Grey’s guardianship? But a numb, desperate feeling had seized her, and she cared for nothing, loved nothing, prayed for nothing.