“I have known those, as far gone as she, rally for hours,” Jean remarked, in a half-whisper.
Margery shook her head. “She won’t rally. It will be only the working out of my dream. I dreamt last night——”
“Don’t get talking of dreams now, Margery,” interrupted Jean, with a shiver. “I never like to bring dreams up when the dead are about.”
Margery cast a resentful glance at her. “Jean, woman, if you have laughed at my dreams once you have laughed at them a hundred times when we lived together at Ashlydyat, ridiculing and saying you never could believe in such things. You know you have.”
“No more I don’t believe in ’em,” said Jane, taking little sips of her hot tea. “But it’s not a pleasant subject for to-night. The child is to come to the old home, they say, to be brought up by my lady.”
Margery grunted.
“Shall we have you at Ashlydyat again, Margery?”
“Now don’t you bother your head about me, Jean, woman. Is it a time to cast one’s thoughts about and lay out plans? Let the future take care of itself.”
Jean remained silent after this rebuff and attended to her tea, which she could not get sufficiently cool to drink comfortably. She had been an inferior servant to Margery at Ashlydyat, in a measure under her control; and she still deferred to her in manner. Presently she began again.
“It’s a curious complaint that your mistress has died of, Margery. Leastways it has a curious name. I made bold to ask Dr. Beale to-night what it was, when I went to open the gate for him, and he called it—what was it?—atrophy. Atrophy: that was it. They could not at all class the disease of which Mrs. George Godolphin had died, he said, and were content to call it atrophy for want of a better name. I took leave to say that I didn’t understand the word, and he explained that it meant a gradual wasting away of the system without apparent cause.”