This event brought others of the family into the room, and amongst them Colin's best friend, Roger. No sooner did he see what had happened, than his spirit and his feelings were at once aroused.
“I tell you,” he exclaimed passionately, though without addressing any one in particular,—“I tell you, you will kill the girl if you go on in this way with her!”
And then Jane was carried away and placed on her pretty white bed, and tended carefully by her mother and her sister and her waiting-maids, until life came reluctantly back again, and she waked once more into the consciousness of misery.
“Is he gone, mother?” she demanded in the first faint tones that conscious animation supplied to the tongue; “is he gone?”
“No, my dear, he is not gone; nor is he going yet,” replied Mrs. Calvert.
“That's right!—that's right!” she exclaimed. And then, as she looked her parent earnestly in the face, she asked—“Mother! do you remember how you ever loved my father?”
That little simple appeal was irresistible, as a world of tears soon testified.
After that Jane grew calmer, and sat up with her mother and sister to catch the air from an opened window that looked through a nest of vine leaves into the garden.
Meantime Roger Calvert, his father, and Colin, had further conversation below stairs, which ended in producing a determination on the part of Colin and his friend of great interest as well as importance in our history, but which will be farther explained in another chapter.