Jean awoke with a clutch of fear at her heart. Was that the death watch of which her old nurse had once told her?
She sat up on her improvised couch, and again there came that strange sound repeated three times. But now, being thoroughly awake, she knew them at once for what they were—a signal, a summons, from the invalid lodger who lived in the back room on the ground floor of the house.
Jean did not wait to strike a match, but went quickly to the door. She was unwilling to be caught here, downstairs, by Mrs. Lightfoot, so she walked on tiptoe past the housekeeper’s bedroom, and then she ran lightly up the kitchen stairs and knocked on the sick lodger’s door.
“Come in!” called out a clear, well-modulated voice.
She opened the door on a strange and, to her, a most unexpected sight.
The high, well-proportioned eighteenth-century room was well and even luxuriously furnished. Green damask curtains were drawn across the two windows. On the thick felt carpet which covered the floor, stood a mahogany chest of drawers and, facing the door, a high modern bedstead. By the bed was a table bearing a reading lamp, which, though shaded, lit up the finely shaped head and thin, bony face of the man lying in the bed. His head was covered with a thick thatch of fair hair, and he was propped up on three or four pillows placed at his back.
To Jean’s pitying eyes he appeared to be dying.
And as she stood there, still close to the door outside the circle of light cast by the lamp, she gradually took in other, minor, details. There was a pile of books on the table, and on the blue silk eiderdown a small volume was open, face downward.
“Mrs. Lightfoot?” said the invalid in a doubtful tone. “I’m ashamed of having had to rouse you, but I feel much less well to-night, also parched with thirst.”
Jean took a few steps forward. “I’m Mrs. Lightfoot’s ‘help.’ And as Mrs. Lightfoot is asleep I thought it better to come up.”