"What strange eyes he had," she thought at times, and whenever she thought that, she shivered, for it seemed to her that his hot, veiled glance was still upon her.
"I wonder whether he is really a good man?" she asked herself. She would have liked to answer this question in the affirmative, but there was something that kept her from doing so. And there was another something in her that took but little note of that aspect, but only prayed that those two might be happy together, happy as she herself had never been, happy as—and here lay the secret.
It was a Sunday evening, the last one in January.
Nathaniel lay under the bed-clothes and breathed with difficulty. His fever was remarkably low, but he was badly smothered.
The lamp burned on the table—a reading lamp had been procured with difficulty and had been twice carried off in favour of wealthier guests. Toward the bed Mary had shaded the lamp with a piece of red blotting paper from her portfolio. A rosy shimmer poured out over the couch of the ill man, tinted the red covers more red, and caused a deceptive glow of health to appear on his cheek.
The flasks and vials on the table glittered with an equivocal friendliness, as though something of the demeanour of him who had prescribed their contents adhered to them.
Between them lay the narrow old hymnal and the gilt figures, "1795" shimmered in the middle of the worn and shabby covers.
The hour of retirement had come. The latest of the guests, returning from the reading room, had said good-night to each other in the hall. Angeline had been dismissed. Her giggles floated away into silence along the bannisters and the last of her adorers tiptoed by to turn out the lights.
From the next room there came no sound. She was surely asleep, although her breathing was inaudible.
Mary sat at the table. Her head was heavy and she stared into the luminous circle of the lamp. She needed sleep. Yet she was not sleepy. Every nerve in her body quivered with morbid energy.