Accordingly, at eight o’clock Britomarte retired; and Elfie having drank several large cups of strong green tea to keep herself wide awake, took her seat in the big easy chair near the head of Erminie’s bed.
She had nothing to do but to think. She could neither read nor sew; for there was no light in the room but the dim taper that burnt upon the hearth. The whole house was very silent. The three gentlemen, Justin, Major Fielding, Captain Ethel, were reading, or trying to read, in the library below.
The two servants, old Frederica and Catherine, her niece, were seated in their kitchen.
And the one man servant, old Bob, was dozing in a sort of porter’s chair in the hall near the front door, to be easily within call.
Elfie looked forward wearily, drearily to her six hours of lonely vigilance. Nothing but her love for Erminie could have borne through its solitude and tediousness.
Even the first two hours, between eight and ten, when she had waking company in the house, seemed awful in solitude and interminable in tediousness.
All was so silent that she heard the sound of the very first footfalls of the family preparing to retire, and it filled her with a strange, nervous sense of desolation and dread.
First came the echo of the distant steps of the women servants going by the back stairs to their rooms in the attic.
Next came the three gentlemen up the front stairs. They all paused at the door of the sick room, to hear the last report of Erminie’s condition before taking a final leave for the night.
Elfie went to meet them and gave her cheerless bulletin—“No change.”