And with this last menace, he departed to join his guests in their excursion.
For upward of three hours after he left her, she lay as she had lain all that livelong night, prostrate, rigid, and motionless. Others in her situation might have shed tears, but Georgia had none to shed; her eyes were dry and burning, her lips parched; natures like hers do not weep, in their deadliest straits the heart sheds tears of blood.
She arose at last, and giddily crossed the room, and rang the bell. Her maid answered the summons.
"Susan," she said, lifting her heavy eyes, "make haste and dress me. I am going down to the drawing-room."
"What will you please to wear, madam?" said Susan, looking at her in wonder.
"Anything, anything, it does not matter, only make haste," she said, slowly.
Susan, thus left to herself, arrayed her mistress in a rich crimson satin, with heavy frills of lace, bound her shining black hair around her head in elaborate plaits and braids, fastened her ruby earrings in her small ears, clasped a bracelet set with the same fiery jewels on her beautiful rounded arm, and then, finally, seeing even the crimson satin did not lend a glow to the deadly pale face, she applied rouge to the cheeks and lips, until Georgia was apparently as blooming as ever before her. And all this time she had sat like a statue, like a milliner's lay figure, to be dressed, unheeding, unnoticing it all, until Susan had finished.
"Will you please to see if you will do, ma'am," said Susan, respectfully.
Georgia lifted her languid eyes to the beautiful face and form in its dark, rich beauty and fiery costume, and said faintly:
"Yes; you have done very well. You can go now."