Nancy dashed across the hearthrug. “What is it?” she exclaimed. “What is it, Lavinia?”
Lavinia apparently could not say what it was. She seemed to be in the greatest agony; her face had turned livid. Nancy was next door to an imbecile in any emergency, and fairly wrung her hands in her distress.
“Oh, what can be the matter with me?” gasped Lavinia. “Nancy, I think I am dying.”
The next moment she had glided from the chair to the floor, and lay there shrieking and writhing. Bursting away, Nancy ran round to the next house, all closed to-day, rang wildly at the private door, and when it was opened by Mariette, rushed upstairs to madame’s salon.
Madame Veuve Sauvage, comprehending that something was amiss, without understanding Nancy’s frantic words, put a shawl on her shoulders to hasten to the other house, ordering Mariette to follow her. Her sons were out.
There lay Lavinia, in the greatest agony. Madame Sauvage sent Mariette off for Monsieur Dupuis, and told her to fly. “Better bring Monsieur Henri Dupuis, Mariette,” she called after her: “he will get quicker over the ground than his old father.”
But Monsieur Henri Dupuis, as it turned out, was absent. He had left that morning for Calais with his wife, to spend two days with her friends who lived there, purposing to be back early on Tuesday morning. Old Monsieur Dupuis came very quickly. He thought Mademoiselle Preen must have inward inflammation, he said to Madame Sauvage, and inquired what she had eaten for dinner. Nancy told him as well as she could between her sobs and her broken speech.
A fricandeau of veal, potatoes, a cauliflower au gratin, and a frangipane tart from the pastrycook’s. No fruit or any other dessert. They took a little Bordeaux wine with dinner, and a liqueur glass of chartreuse afterwards.
All very wholesome, pronounced Monsieur Dupuis, with satisfaction; not at all likely to disagree with mademoiselle. Possibly she had caught a chill.
Mariette had run for Flore, who came in great consternation. Between them all they got Lavinia upstairs, undressed her and laid her in bed, applying hot flannels to the pain—and Monsieur Dupuis administered in a wine-glass of water every quarter-of-an-hour some drops from a glass phial which he had brought in his pocket.