Madame was seized at that moment with a wheezing asthmatic cough.
“I had a bad night,” she said pantingly, “and have no breath to spare. Tell her what to get me, Mary.”
Thirty years ago Madame Le Conte was a slender, graceful girl, with a clear olive complexion, delicate features, ruby lips, bright black eyes, and lively, engaging manners; now she was an overgrown, gross-looking, middle-aged, or rather elderly, woman, immensely fat, tortured with asthma, gout and sundry kindred ailments, dull, heavy, and uninteresting, nervous, irritable, childishly unreasonable and changeable, full of whims and fancies—a wretched burden to herself and all about her.
Rolling in wealth, she constantly sighed over the sad fact that there were none of her own kith and kin to inherit it, and that the service rendered her was not the service of love, but merely of self-interest.
Mary, her personal attendant, had been with her many years, thoroughly understood her ways, and knew how to minister to her wants as no one else did; and quite aware of the fact, sometimes took advantage of it to scold her mistress when much tried by her unreasonable demands, threatening to leave, and occasionally even refusing to obey orders, when Madame would angrily dismiss her, but on being seemingly taken at her word, would relent, burst into tears and pathetic entreaties, and buy a reconciliation with fair promises, increased wages, or expensive presents.
Madame wore a cork hand; how she had come to be deprived of her good right hand no one knew or dared ask, for she was extremely sensitive in regard to her loss, and would not endure the slightest allusion to it. Mary removed the artificial limb at night and replaced it in the morning without question or comment, and made it part of her business to divert the idle curiosity of others from this deformity of her mistress. This she did without waiting for instructions; for Mary had a heart, and often pitied the poor rich cripple from its very depths.
“Yes, she had a bad night, so don’t make her talk any more,” she said to Kathleen as she carefully laved her mistress’s face and hand. “She’ll have a broiled sweet-bread—”
“No, no, let it be stewed; I’ll have it stewed,” interrupted the Madame.
Mary completed the bill of fare as given by her mistress a few moments before, and Kathleen turned to go, but had scarcely reached the door when she was called back.
“Waffles, waffles, Katty,” wheezed her mistress.