She felt Flower's hands and they were deadly cold; she shouted in her ear and she did not respond. Then running into her own room, she brought out a pitcher of fresh water, which she poured over Flower's head and face in a perfect deluge.
But not a sigh, not the movement of an eyelash rewarded her efforts at resuscitation. With something like awe she began to realize that her work was completed sooner than she had expected. Flower was already dead.
She flung wide the door and began to scream loudly for the servants.
Her voice rang wildly down the long halls and dim stairways, returning to her in ghostly echoes; but no one answered to her wild calls. The servants had stolen away to a merry-making in the town.
Something of the truth began to dawn upon her mind when she had shouted herself hoarse.
"They are either stolen away or fast asleep," she muttered, and rushed down-stairs to their quarters in the yard.
The cottage door was locked, and Jewel pounded lustily without receiving any reply. Looking at the windows, she saw that they were closed and dark.
"The wretches! how dared they go away and leave me with that dead girl?" she muttered, ignoring the fact that Flower had been alive a little while ago. The deep, hoarse baying of the watch-dog, aroused in his distant kennel by the noise she had made, caused her to start and crouch down shivering on the back door-step.
"I shall stay here till they come. I—I—can not watch by that dead girl alone!" she muttered, with a superstitious horror of death.