And actually, before his astonished company could move or collect its wits, he had bent and spoken something, inaudible, into the patient’s ear.
Now, I ask you to remember that this girl had been in a cataleptic sleep for not less than three months, under observation, and with no chance, so far as I knew, to cozen her attendants; and believe me then as you can when I tell you that, answering, instantly and normally, to Valentine’s whisper, she sighed, stretched her arms, though at first with an air of some lassitude and weakness, and, opening her eyes, fixed them with a sort of suspended stare upon the face of her exorcist. Gradually, then, a little pucker deepened between her brows, and instantly, some shadow of fright or uneasiness flickering in her dark pupils, she turned her head aside. Obviously she was distressed by the vision of this strange face coming between the light and her normal, as it seemed to her, awaking.
Valentine immediately stood away, and backed to where she could not see him.
C——, obviously putting great command on himself, since circumstances made it appear that some damned “natural magic” had got the better of his natural science, took the situation in hand professionally, and frowned to the aunt, to whom the baby had been restored, to show herself. The woman, rallying from the common stupefaction, gave an acrid sniff and obeyed.
“Well, Nancy!” she said, in a tone between wonder and remonstrance.
The girl looked round again and up, with a little shock. Immediately her dilated pupils accepted with frank astonishment this more familiar apparition.
“Gracious goodness, Aunt Mim!” she whispered; “what have you got there?”
Then she turned her face on the pillow, with a smile of drowsy rapture.
“Anyhow, you’ve found your way to Skene at last,” she murmured, and instantly fell into a natural sleep, from which, it was evident, there must be no awaking her.
C—— wheeled upon my friend.