Henriette lay back among her pillows, with closed eyes. She had protested against the drawing of the curtains "because the dull twilight would stifle" her, and she begged that every one would come in and go out of her room as usual and speak in ordinary tones,—she could not endure whispering and "tiptoe tread;" she was even afraid of it: it made her think that every one thought her dying. Her wish was granted. Without being noisy, all tried to preserve their usual manner of speaking and stepping.
When the doctor left the room for a few moments to get a book, the dean's widow entered, bearing a small waiter, and immediately a delicious fragrance of tea overcame even the strong odour of cologne water. The waiter was covered with a napkin of the finest damask, the cups were of old porcelain, and the antique silver spoons massive and thick, inherited through many generations. The red sunlight illumined and transfigured the elderly figure that, advancing in spotless purity of attire, offered some refreshment to the beautiful woman in the arm-chair by the window.
"Home-made waffles?" And Flora started up from her half-reclining posture. "Oh, yes! even in this corner I could smell them baking in the kitchen. How good they look!" She clasped her hands as if in naïve admiration. "Good heavens, one needs to be as entirely unfit for domestic cares as I am to be as utterly ignorant of how to produce such a little work of art! How much patience and how much time it must take!"
"Time flies so fast that I have learned to accomplish small tasks quickly," the old lady replied, with a smile, "so as to have many hours of leisure at my disposal. My household cares must not interfere with my intellectual pleasures. This last winter I completed the task I had undertaken of reading the Bible through from beginning to end——"
"For your spiritual welfare?" asked Flora.
"Not at all. I know by heart all those portions that can comfort and support me; but the fierce politico-religious controversy at present raging in the world should interest women greatly, and, although we may not enter the field, we ought to range ourselves intelligently beneath some banner, which we can do only by divesting our minds of prejudices and superstitions engendered by pulpit and school, and studying the sacred books themselves."
Flora looked at her in mute astonishment. Read through the whole Bible for such a reason! How intolerably dry and uninteresting! Her poetic nature could never have found patience for such a labour. Irritated by the discovery of such unexpected intellectual capacity in the woman whom she had described as given over to sweeping, baking, and darning stockings, she entirely forgot the part she herself hoped to play before the world,—that of an earnest and profound student. How had the dean's widow come to know anything about what was going on in the intellectual world? Now she knew who had so spoiled the doctor by filling his imagination with an ideal of a wife who should be housekeeper and intellectual companion at one and the same time.
Kitty had come forward and taken the waiter from the old lady. She marked the amazement painted on her sister's beautiful face, and, fearing lest she might give utterance to it in some thoughtless remark, hastened to offer her some tea.
Flora impatiently toyed with her handkerchief, and refused to take anything, upon the plea that she was "still too much agitated to taste a morsel," although a few minutes afterward the young girl saw her take a bonbonnière from her pocket and refresh herself with its contents; evidently she wished to avoid accepting any hospitality beneath this roof. Kitty perfectly understood that this visit to the old house—this glimpse of its simple bourgeois interior—had destroyed every vestige of self-control in Flora's mind; she could easily read in those large, gray-blue eyes, sparkling with impatience, that the moment was near at hand when the "yoke must be thrown off at all hazards." In her inmost soul the younger sister breathed a fervent prayer that the blow might not strike the unhappy man here by his own hearthstone. Fortunately, the dean's widow did not observe Flora's conduct. Never dreaming of the black, threatening cloud that overshadowed her peaceful life, she took her waiter from the room after Kitty had gratefully accepted a cup of tea.
The glowing sunset gradually paled. The crimson light faded in the sick-room until it illumined only the beautiful woman reclining by the window. Flora sat there like some evil angel around whom was playing demoniac fire.