"Thank you, Parker," she said. "I am glad to know that. Good night."
But Parker had something to say, and this was a favorable opportunity.
"She's been awful bad today, miss. It can't go on."
"That is hardly surprising, taking into account the shock Mrs. Fenley received this morning."
"That's what I have in me mind, miss. She's changed."
"How changed? You need not close the door. Never mind the light. It is hardly dark when the eyes become used to the gloom."
Parker drew nearer. Obeying the instincts of her class, she assumed a confidential tone.
"Well, miss, you know why you went out?"
"Yes," said Sylvia rather curtly. She had left the invalid when the use of a hypodermic syringe became essential if an imminent outburst of hysteria was to be prevented. The girl had no power to interfere, and was too young and inexperienced to make an effective protest; but she was convinced that to encourage a vice was not the best method of treating it. More than once she had spoken of the matter to Mortimer Fenley; but he merely said that he had tried every known means to cure his wife, short of immuring her in an asylum, and had failed. "She is happy in a sort of a way," he would add, with a certain softening of voice and manner. "Let her continue so." Thus a minor tragedy was drifting to its close when Fenley himself was so rudely robbed of life.