"I am going to Baltimore in exactly one half-hour and I have a satchel to pack. Good-bye and do as I tell you."
Mrs. Lister lay in a cold perspiration. Eleanor writing a book about Basil! She tried to grip the smooth sheet drawn tightly over the smooth mattress; finally she put both hands over her face. She forgot Basil, she forgot Richard, she forgot everything except a prayer that she might not scream.
Thomasina came in the front door as Dr. Green went out. She was told by him that Mrs. Lister was only exhausted by the heat, that company would do her good, and that she, Thomasina, should go upstairs and stay as long as she could. She glanced about as she went through the hall, her mind filled with pleasant recollections of the former dwellers in the high-ceilinged rooms. A friendship handed down from generation to generation as was hers with the Everman family was rare and precious.
She laid her rose-colored parasol on the hall table and went slowly up the stairs. When she had almost reached the top, she heard the sound of a smothered sob, and remembered with a pang the days when she had sat with Mary Alcestis beside her father's coffin. Poor Mary Alcestis had had a good deal to bear. What could be the matter now? Surely, surely nothing could have happened to Richard! Thomasina hastened her steps.
Mrs. Lister lay face downward, her cheek pressed deep into the pillow. Her hands were clenched above her head and the bed shook with the violence of her weeping. She had now passed the limit of endurance.
Thomasina went close to the ample bed with its quivering figure.
"Mary Alcestis, I am here and I will stay with you. If it does you good to cry, I'll stand guard, so cry away."
Thomasina bowed one shutter a little more closely and closed the door and then sat down in the chair which Dr. Green had left. There could be nothing the matter with Richard, or Dr. Green would have told her.
Mrs. Lister did not, as Thomasina suggested, have her cry out. She tried at once to control herself, and succeeded bravely with her tears. But the hysterical impulse was not spent. It would have been better if she had continued to weep, but instead she began to talk, and having begun, could not stop.
She told Thomasina the whole story of Basil from the day of his birth as though Thomasina had never seen or heard of him.