The doctor had already looked over the chart, and he held it now in his hand while he waited for a response.
"There is a fighting chance, isn't there?"
His face was very grave, though his voice still maintained its professional cheerfulness. "With a child there is always a chance, and if she pulls through the night——"
"I shall keep my eyes on her every minute." As she spoke she moved back to Letty's bed, while the doctor went out with an abrupt nod and the words, "Mr. Blackburn wishes me to spend the night here. I'll be back after dinner."
The door had hardly closed after him, when it opened again noiselessly, and Mrs. Timberlake thrust her head through the crack. As she peered into the room, with her long sallow face and her look of mutely inviting disaster, there flashed through Caroline's mind the recollection of one of her father's freckled engravings of "Hecuba Gazing Over the Ruins of Troy."
"I've brought you a cup of tea. Couldn't you manage to drink it?"
"Yes, I'd like it." There was something touching in the way Mrs. Timberlake seemed to include her in the distress of the family—to assume that her relation to Letty was not merely the professional one of a nurse to a patient.
Stepping cautiously, as if she were in reality treading on ruins, the housekeeper crossed the room and placed the tray on the table at the bedside. While she leaned over to pour out the tea, she murmured in a rasping whisper, "Mammy Riah is crying so I wouldn't let her come in. Can Letty hear us?"
"No, she is in a stupor. She has been moaning a good deal, but she is too weak to keep it up. I've just given her some medicine."
Her gaze went back to the child, who stirred and gave a short panting sob. In her small transparent face, which was flushed with fever, the blue circle about the mouth seemed to start out suddenly like the mark of a blow. She lay very straight and slim under the cover, as if she had shrunken to half her size since her illness, and her soft, fine hair, drawn smoothly back from her waxen forehead, clung as flat and close as a cap.