“I must go, I must go,” she said in a weak and husky voice, as if hardly yet mistress of herself.
“Yes, you shall go, in one minute,” said Mabin. And springing forward with ready kindness and affection in her face, she signed to the servants to leave them together. “Let me do your hair for you; I can do it, I know I can,” she went on gently, touching the beautiful fair hair which had become loose and disordered, and looking with tender compassion into the blue eyes, which seemed to have lost their brilliancy, their bright color.
Mrs. Dale stared with wide-open, dull eyes at the forms of the two servants, as they left the room. Then she turned her head slowly, and looked long at the young girl whose arm was now around her.
“Why are you so kind to me now?” she asked at last in a weak and almost childish voice that went straight to Mabin’s heart. “You were not kind last night!”
The first answer Mabin gave was a slight pressure of the arm upon Mrs. Dale’s shoulder. Then Mabin bent down and whispered in her ear:
“I didn’t know so much then!”
The little slender form in her arm shivered.
“What—what do you know now?” Then recollecting the events which had preceded her own loss of consciousness, she suddenly sprang off the sofa. “I know! I know! That cruel woman told you! I must go to her; oh, I must go!”
“Well, let me do up your dress first.”
And Mrs. Dale then perceived that the upper part of her bodice had been unfastened by the maids, and that her face was still wet from the sprinkling of water they had given her. She submitted to Mabin’s assistance, therefore, in arranging her hair and her dress, without another word being exchanged between them. When she was ready to go, however, she stopped on her way to the door, and gave Mabin one long, curious look. It made the girl spring forward, with a world of sympathy in her eyes.