She went towards him, ignoring Eugene, who stood by the door, somewhat cynically regarding her. “Don’t you take on, my dear!” she said. “It’s little he’d care for a curse or two. You were a good son to him, and he knew it.”
"No, I wasn’t. I thought — I didn’t even believe — But he was ill! I didn’t want him to die! I — oh, hell, I was dammed fond of him, the grand old devil that he was! And I wish to God he were alive now to — to bawl the lot of us out!” His voice broke on something between a laugh and a sob; he brushed his hand across his brimming eyes, and pushed his way past Eugene out of the room.
“I am afraid, my dear Loveday,” said Eugene maliciously, “that you will find my brother Bart more upset by this event than perhaps you expected.”
“It’s natural he should be,” she-responded, picking up Raymond’s dressing-gown, and putting it away in the wardrobe. “If you please, sir!”
He stood aside to allow her to pass, a little nettled by her self-possession, and she went away towards the back of the house to fetch her mistress’s early tea-tray from the pantry.
Faith had fallen asleep on the previous evening without the aid of narcotics. She had gone up to her room soon after Penhallow had been wheeled out of the Long drawing-room, and, as Loveday assisted her to undress, she had noticed with vague surprise that the nightly headache which she had come to regard as inevitable was for once absent. She supposed that the aspirin she had swallowed before going down to dinner must still be operating on her system, and she had told Loveday, with a little sigh, that she felt as though she could sleep naturally. A feeling of deep peace hung over her, undisturbed by any twinge of remorse for what she had done. She was very tired, but not with the nervous fatigue which made it impossible for her to relax her limbs and to be still in her bed. Almost as soon as she had laid her head upon the pillow, her eyelids had begun to sink over her eyes; and as she thought, not of Penhallow but of the little flat in London, she drifted into a deep peaceful sleep from which she did not arouse until Loveday drew back the curtains next morning.
She seemed then to herself to be rising to the surface of a vast ocean of sleep, and as she stirred, and opened her eyes, she murmured: “Oh, I have had such a loverly sleep!”
Loveday came towards the bed with her mistress’s bed jacket in her hand. Faith stretched herself, and yawned, not immediately remembering the events of the previous day. She asked what the time was, and when Loveday told her, half past eight, she said, sitting up, and putting her arms into the sleeves of the jacket: “Why, how late! You shouldn’t have let me sleep on, Loveday!”
Loveday turned to the table beside the bed, and poured out a cup of tea. “No, ma’am, I know. But you were sleeping so sound I didn’t care to wake you. There’s some bad news you have to hear, ma’am.”
As she spoke these words, remembrance of what she had done came flooding back to Faith, and she gave a stifled exclamation. After so good a night’s rest, with its soothing effect upon her overwrought nerves, it now seemed to her that she must have been mad, and she could almost have believed that she had dreamt the whole. She recalled quite clearly her every action, and even her thoughts, which, appearing reasonable to her at the time, seemed in the light of morning to partake of the nature of insanity. The wish that Penhallow might die was still present; but the resolution to bring about his death had departed from her mind as suddenly as it had entered it. So unreal did her action seem to her that she felt as divorced from it as though she had performed it in a trance.