Mrs. Fielding was not in bed at all. She was sitting bolt upright in a chair, and when Flower came gliding in, her mother's aspect struck her with such fear and horror that she could not repress a cry of distress. For a moment it appeared to her that a stranger was sitting there in her mother's chair.
At a first glance Mrs. Fielding looked like an old woman. Her handsome face was drawn, haggard, and gray, and the long tresses of hair that fell round her shoulders had turned to snowy-white since yesterday. The only attribute of youth remaining was in her large, brilliant dark eyes that burned with an unnatural and feverish glitter, betokening a terrible inward excitement.
Her lips were working nervously, and low, incoherent words issued from them like the ravings of a lunatic.
At that awe-struck cry from Flower's lips the terribly changed woman looked quickly up, and her face grew, if possible, more ghastly than before. She threw out both hands, crying hoarsely:
"Go out of my sight this moment!"
"But, mamma—" began the startled girl.
"Go, I say—and at once!" Mrs. Fielding cried out, in such harsh and threatening accents that poor Flower fled affrighted from the room.
In the hall she encountered Jewel, dressed for walking. She ran up to her eagerly, crying out:
"Oh, sister, our black mammy died last night, and poor mamma is almost crazed with grief. Her beautiful black hair has turned white as snow, and her face is like an old woman's. And," with a choking sob, "she drove me out of her room."
"I will go to her!" cried Jewel, turning toward her mother's room.