“Mix some brandy quickly for me, Susan; make it strong. Now, then, give it to me.”
With some difficulty Marcia managed to put a few drops between the blue lips, and the next minute the invalid opened her eyes. She fixed them on Marcia, smiled, shuddered, and closed them again, collapsing once more into unconsciousness.
It was in this condition that Dr Anstruther found her when he entered the house a quarter of an hour later.
“I feared it,” he paid, just glancing at Marcia.
“No, it is not death,” he added, seeing the look of appeal and self-reproach in the girl’s eyes; “but it might have been. Had you been a few minutes later we could have done nothing. Now, then, we will get her into bed.”
He managed very skilfully, with Marcia’s help and with that of the repentant and miserable Susan, to convey the poor invalid to a bed, which had already been warmed for her. She then sat by her, administering brandy and water at short intervals, and holding her wrist between his fingers and thumb.
“That’s better,” he said, after a time. “Now, then, Miss Marcia, will you go downstairs and prepare a nice cup of bread and milk and bring it up to me? she must manage to eat it. She has been absolutely starved; she has had nothing at all since her early dinner.”
Marcia flew out of the room.
“Susan,” she said, “Susan, what is the meaning of this?”
“Don’t ask me, Miss; ’tain’t my fault. When young ladies themselves are born without natural affection, what can a poor servant gel do? Do you think I’d leave my mother? No, that I wouldn’t. Poor lady, and she that devoted to them. To be sure she have her little fads and fancies, and her little crotchets, as what invalid but wouldn’t have? But, oh, Miss, to think of their unkindness.”