“Mamma! mamma!” she cried, seized with sudden agitation, as though suffering from nightmare.
She writhed about in her bed, her eyelids still heavy with sleep, and then struggled to reach a sitting posture.
“Hide, I beseech you!” whispered Hélène to the doctor in a tone of anguish. “You will be her death if you stay here.”
In an instant Henri vanished into the window-recess, concealed by the blue velvet curtain; but it was in vain, the child still kept up her pitiful cry: “Oh, mamma! mamma! I suffer so much.”
“I am here beside you, my darling; where do you feel the pain?”
“I don’t know. Oh, see, it is here! Oh, it is scorching me!” With eyes wide open and features distorted, she pressed her little hands to her bosom. “It came on me in a moment. I was asleep, wasn’t I? But I felt something like a burning coal.”
“But it’s all gone now. You’re not pained any longer, are you?”
“Yes, yes, I feel it still.”
She glanced uneasily round the room. She was now wholly awake; the sullen gloom crept over her face once more, and her cheeks became livid.
“Are you by yourself, mamma?” she asked.