He left the room, and Miss Ramsey came in, her eyes red and her small hands trembling.
They took off her wet things, while she lay faint and still, a tinge of blueness rising to her face and to her fallen eyelids.
Suddenly she spoke.
"Give me the medicine on the mantel," she said—"quick!"
It was tincture of digitalis. Miss Ramsey measured out the drops and gave them to her. After she had swallowed them the color in her face became more natural and her breathing less labored. Miss Ramsey was applying a mustard-plaster to her chest, while the maid rubbed her cold, white feet, which lay like plaster casts in the large, red hands.
Mariana looked at them wistfully. "I have done foolish things all my life," she said, "and this is the most foolish of all."
"What, dear?" asked Miss Ramsey, but she did not answer.
When Anthony came in, followed by the doctor, she was lying propped up among the pillows, with soft white blankets heaped over her. Her eyes were closed and she was breathing quietly.
Salvers took her hand and bent his ear to her chest.
"She must be stimulated," he said. "You say she has already taken digitalis—yes?"