They noticed that, throughout that day, she watched Aglaia with a curious wistful expression in her eyes. Once when Tom, who was coming in and going out helplessly all day long, sat down beside her bed, she drew the child towards her, and put her little hand in his. But she said very little, and none of them spoke to her much. All but Trixy were abandoning hope; she hoped on still.
In the evening Grace seemed better and stronger; she asked for fruit, and they brought her the richest and rarest that could be procured. There were baskets of fragrant white flowers in the room. She asked for one to be placed on her bed, and, for a few minutes, her thin pale fingers strayed lovingly over the cool petals. One little white rose she pressed to her lips.
'It is such a pleasant sensation to touch them,' she said; 'they are so pure, so sweet.'
Late in the evening the doctor paid her a visit, gave her an anodyne and spoke with doubtful cheerfulness. Kit, and Mrs. Lyster, and Mrs. Durant, and baby Dick and his mother, and poor little Lucy came in, one by one, to bid her good-night. They had been sternly drilled by Trixy, and none of them wept or sighed. Trixy herself and Aglaia, who had begged hard not to be sent away, sat with her until ten o'clock; then Lady Elton insisted that they should rest, and they went into the inner room where they slept together.
Tom had by this time crept in. By one of the marble lattices there was a deep recess, shut off from the rest of the room by a screen. In this recess he took up his station. The early hours of the night passed quickly by. Grace seemed to be asleep. There was no movement, not the least sound of life in all the palace. Even the chattering of the chowkedars was silent, in obedience to the orders he had sent out by Hoosanee. That faithful servant was keeping his watch in the hall of the zenana; but he did not so much as move. Outside Tom could hear a soft wind stirring in the heavy foliage of the trees, and silver arrows of light, shot earthwards from shining worlds, myriads of miles away, stole in through the lattice. Years afterwards he remembered, with a throb of pain, how wide and how desolate the universe seemed to him that night. Tired as he was when he began his watch, he did not feel the least disposition to sleep; his mind was too busy, too poignantly alive, his heart was too full. As the night wore on, dark and terrible thoughts assailed him. Once he could have cried out like a hurt child. The cruelty of life smote him, the piteous waste of force—hearts large with love, souls aching with passionate pity, and able to do nothing!
Down the sheltered river the little boat might be brought, furthered tenderly by guardian hands. Upon the sea, wide, fathomless, undiscovered, the awful sea of eternity, it must launch out alone. This was the mystery that oppressed him. Later he might think of himself, his own sorrow and loss and disappointment. Now all his heart and mind were with the sweet soul that was going out from them into the invisible.
A sense of defeat and powerlessness, almost intolerable in its anguish, came over him. He got up and struck his forehead against the marble lattice, and the sharp pain of the blow seemed to bring him back to himself.
Now and then he would rise from his seat behind the screen and look back into the room. By the light of the shaded lamp he could see the mother's bent form as she turned over the pages of her book, and the white, white face upon the pillow, as still now as if death had frozen it into the everlasting silence. Twice he saw Lady Elton rise swiftly and lean over her, and then his heart beat so tumultuously that he thought she must have heard it. But she returned to her seat, and he knew that there was still breath.
So on for hours that seemed like a lifetime. At last the darkness began to lift. Through the lattice by which he was standing he saw the stars grow high and pale, and the grey light of early morning stealing over the earth. The air came in with the chill of the morning in it, and he drew the screen further round the lattice lest it should touch the white face on the pillow.
Ah! what was that? A cry! In an instant he was by the bedside; Grace was sitting up. Her eyes were wide open, her arms were extended, her voice was clear and strong. 'Keep me awake, Kit,' she cried, 'keep me awake!' Then in a voice lower, but thrilled through and through with ecstasy, 'Tom! Tom!'