“Look, look!” gasped Jacqueline; “my dress is being ruined!”
Judith heard Delilah running up the stairs in response to her frightened call, but Jacqueline’s eyes had such a strange expression in them that she asked her involuntarily, as she tremblingly supported her:
“Jacqueline, do you know me?”
“Perfectly,” answered Jacqueline. “I know everything about me.”
Delilah, who was a natural-born nurse, was as calm as Judith was agitated.
“’Tain’ nuttin’ tall, chile; ’scusin’ ’tis er leetle speck o’ blood fum yo’ th’oat. I kin stop it righter way”; and, sure enough, in ten minutes she had applied some simple remedy and the blood ceased to flow. Meanwhile Jacqueline, unable to speak, had motioned eagerly and violently to Judith to remove the white silk dress. Judith threw it on a chair. Jacqueline’s eyes filled with tears.
“It is such a pity to have it ruined—and one’s wedding-dress, too!”
“Hush-hush! you must not talk,” cried Judith.
The flow of blood apparently was a trifle, and in a little while Jacqueline lay back in the great, old-fashioned bed silent, deadly white, but composed.