When she came to this conclusion she was standing near the foot of the bed, looking at the man lying there asleep. It was on the stroke of half-past seven, and she had come to let him have his medicine again. Then she noticed that his eyelids were parted, and that he was looking at her.
"It is time to take one of these capsules now," she said, gently moving to his side and offering it to him.
He took it without a word, and gulped it down with a swallow of water. Then he sank back on the pillow, only to raise himself at once, as he was again shaken by a severe fit of coughing.
At last he lay back on the bed once more, still breathing heavily.
A fresh, young voice was heard at the door leading to the hall, saying, "May I come in, John?" and then a graceful young figure floated into the room with a birdlike motion.
The sick man opened his eyes wide as his wife came near him, and a smile illumined his face.
"How beautiful you are!" he said, faintly, but proudly.
"Am I?" she answered, laughing a little. "I tried to be to-night, because there will be the smartest women in New York at Mrs. Jimmy Suydam's dance, and I wanted to be as good as any of them."
The nurse had withdrawn towards the window as the wife came forward, and she did not believe that any woman at Mrs. Jimmy Suydam's, wherever that might be, could well look more beautiful than the one who now stood smiling by the side of the sick husband.
She was a blonde, this young wife of an old man, a mere girl, and the vaporous blue dress was cut low on a slender neck girt about by a single strand of large pearls, while a diamond tiara high on her shapely head flashed light into every corner of the darkened sick-room.