Pansy’s eyelids felt too tired and heavy to lift from her eyes, but she seemed to struggle back to consciousness and hear those words spoken above her head. In that moment, too, came a confused memory of the stormy scene with her mother when she had been forced to tell all her story and to bear such bitter reproach and shame as almost maddened her, so that she was glad of the unconsciousness that stole upon her, blotting out for a few weeks all the bitter past and shameful present.
Yes, it had been three weeks since that terrible night, and when Pansy heard those words spoken over her head in her mother’s voice she guessed aright that she had had a dangerous illness.
She opened her blue eyes with an effort, and saw the doctor standing with her mother by the bed.
“See—she is conscious at last. She will begin to get well very fast now,” he said, and gave her an encouraging smile; but Pansy had none to give in return.
It seemed to her that she should never smile again.
When he had gone, she looked wistfully at her mother, without daring to speak, fearing to hear again the scathing reproaches with which she had been assailed that night; but Mrs. Finley had been softened by her daughter’s illness, and she spoke to her very kindly:
“My dear, you have been ill three weeks of fever, but the doctor thinks you are going to get well now.”
Pansy thought of the words she had overheard:
“It would be better, perhaps, for my poor girl if she had died.”
She could not speak just yet, but her big, mournful blue eyes asked a question that Mrs. Finley quickly understood.