The Land of Cockayne: A Novel

by Matilde Serao

'You were conscious all the time?'

'All. I could neither move nor speak, but I understood.'

'Ah!' said he thoughtfully. He sent Margherita to let the Marquis know that his daughter had recovered consciousness.

'Were you in pain?'

'Yes, a great deal, from not being able to come out of my faint. I wept; I felt a pain at my heart.'

'Yes, yes,' he said. 'Don't speak any more—rest.'

The doctor made a sign to the Marquis, who was coming in, to keep silence. Formosa leant over his daughter's bed and touched her forehead with his hand, as if he was blessing her. Her eyelids fluttered and she smiled.

'Your daughter was conscious during her swoon—the rarest kind of fainting fit.'

'Was she conscious?' the Marquis asked in a strange voice.

'Yes; she saw and heard everything. It comes from sensitiveness carried to excess.'