The air grew sweet with the sudden scent of heliotrope, and Miss Dallas pushed aside the curtain gently.
"I may have that sail across the bay before I go? It promises to be fair to-morrow."
He hesitated.
"I suppose it will be our last," said the lady, softly.
She was rather sorry when she had spoken, for she really did not mean anything, and was surprised at the sound of her own voice.
But they took the sail.
Harrie watched them off—her husband did not invite her to go on that occasion—with that stealthy sharpness in her eyes. Her lips and hands and forehead were burning. She had been cold all day. A sound like the tolling of a bell beat in her ears. The children's voices were choked and distant. She wondered if Biddy were drunk, she seemed to dance about so at her ironing-table, and wondered if she must dismiss her, and who could supply her place. She tried to put my room in order, for she was expecting me that night by the last train, but gave up the undertaking in weariness and confusion.
In fact, if Harrie had been one of the Doctor's patients, he would have sent her to bed and prescribed for brain-fever. As she was not a patient, but only his wife, he had not found out that anything ailed her.
Nothing happened while he was gone, except that a friend of Biddy's "dropped in," and Mrs. Sharpe, burning and shivering in her sewing-chair, dreamily caught through the open door, and dreamily repeated to herself, a dozen words of compassionate Irish brogue:—
"Folks as laves folks cryin' to home and goes sailin' round with other women—"