"Yes you can; you will be better in a moment,—it is only coming out of darkness into marvellous light,—a sudden change, that is all. You do look white,—white, delicate, and sweet as a water-lily. I have a great mind to invite Ernest up to see you, you look so interesting. He has been like a distracted man, a wandering Jew, an unlaid ghost, ever since you have been ill. And poor Richard Clyde comes every night to inquire after you, with such a woebegone countenance. And that great, ugly, magnificent creature of a teacher, he has been too,—you certainly are a consequential little lady."
Thus she rattled on, without dreaming of the martyrdom she was inflicting on my weakened nerves.
"I have no doubt you mean to be kind," said I, ready to cry from weakness and irritation; "but if you will only drop the curtains and leave me, I will be so very grateful."
"There—the curtains are down. I am not going to speak another word—I am a perfect lamb—I will bathe your head with cologne, and put you to sleep nicely."
Stepping across the room, as she thought, very softly, but making more noise than Edith would in a week, she seized a bottle of cologne, and coming close to the bedside, bent over me, so that her great, black eyes almost touched mine. Had they been a pair of pistols, I could not have recoiled with greater terror.
"Don't!" again I murmured,—"I am very weak."
"Hush! I am going to put you to sleep."
Pouring the cologne in her hand, till it dripped all over the counterpane and pillow, she deluged my hair, and patted my forehead as she would a colt's that she wanted to stand still. In mute despair I submitted to her tender mercies, certain I should die, if some one did not come to my relief, when the door softly opened, and Mrs. Linwood entered.
"Heaven be praised," thought I,—I had not strength to say it. Tears of weariness and vexation were mingling with the drops with which she had saturated my hair.
"Margaret," said Mrs. Linwood, in a tone of serious displeasure, "what have you been doing? I left her in a sweet sleep, and now I find her wan, tearful, and agitated. You will worry her into a relapse."