“Stargarde, my darling,” murmured Vivienne, caressing her tortured face, “look at me.”
One glance of intense affection she received from Stargarde’s deep blue eyes, then the distorted features composed themselves, and the sufferer seemed to sink into a disturbed sleep.
So quickly that Vivienne wondered how he could have gotten there, Camperdown gently thrust her aside, and knelt down by the divan. “Stargarde,” he said slightly shaking her, “Stargarde,” then bitterly, “Too late; she has gone off.”
“Come in here,” whispered Judy, drawing Vivienne into her room. “Brian is furious with me; he was afraid that one of these things was coming on, and when Val came for him to go downstairs, he told me to talk steadily to Stargarde and not let her fall into one of them; the great thing is to keep her attention.”
“What is it? Oh, what is it she has?” and Vivienne clasped her hands in distress.
“I call it ‘the misery of the world,’” said Judy, dropping her voice. “A few years ago Stargarde was in New York, visiting some philanthropic people. One evening they were going to make a round of the slums. They put on old clothes and took some policemen, and Stargarde went with them. They got into wicked places where men and women of all nations were; I don’t know what they saw, but there were some dreadful things, and ever since then, when Stargarde gets run down and has nothing to take her mind off it, she’ll sit down somewhere, and all the badness that is going on in the world comes up before her like a panorama; she thinks about the men and women in China and Japan and India, and the poor wretches in London and New York, and it almost makes her crazy. I’ve seen her throwing herself about just like an actress on a stage, only with poor Stargarde it is real. You know how big she is; her limbs get convulsed and her face looks like the Laocoön’s, and she is so beautiful; wherever she is and one of these seizures comes on, some one sends for Brian. I’ve seen him sitting by her with the perspiration dropping off his face. It gives him an awful fright, for he says she might die in one of them; he’s afraid of her heart. Sometimes blood comes on her face,” added Judy in an awestruck whisper.
Vivienne was unable to speak.
“This is not a bad one,” said Judy gazing consolingly into her terror-stricken face. “She’s in a kind of trance; I don’t think Brian will even have to give her morphine—wait till I see,” and she tip-toed to the door. “She’s lying quite still,” she reported, coming back; “only moaning occasionally. Vivienne dear, I am going to bed. I don’t dare to face Brian again; he looks so annoyed.”
When Mr. Armour mounted to the topmost hall in search of Vivienne, his eye fell on Stargarde lying in unconsciousness on the divan.
“What does this mean?” he asked of Mammy Juniper who sat by her.