"All a-right," replied Fat Mary willingly, and took herself off forthwith. She had her own uses for a present of spare time at this season.
Margaret put the red flowers down as the door closed behind Fat Mary, and set herself before the mirror. There was still that haze between her thoughts and the realities about her, a drifting cloudiness that sometimes obscured them all together, and sometimes broke and let matters appear.
She noted in the mirror the strange, familiar specter of her own face, and saw that the hectic was strong and high on either cheek. Then the aloe plumes plucked at her thoughts, and the haze closed about her again, leaving her blind in a deep and aimless preoccupation in which her thoughts were no more than a pulse, repeating itself to no end. Ford's declaration and his manner of making it; the Punchinello countenance of the trooper, bestially insinuating; Mrs. Jakes eating soup at Mr. Samson;—these came and went in the dreadful arena of her mind and made a changing spectacle that baffled the march of the clock-hands.
She did not know how long she had been sitting when a rattle at the window surprised her into looking up. She stared absently at the blind till it came again. It had the sound of some one throwing earth from below. She rose and went across and looked out.
It had not touched her nerves at all; it was not the kind of thing which could frighten her. The window was raised at the bottom and she kneeled on the floor and put her head, cloudily haloed with her loose hair, out to the star-tempered dark.
A whisper from below, where the whisperer stood invisible in the shadow at the foot of the wall, hailed her at once.
"Miss Harding," it said. "Miss Harding. I 'm here, directly below you."
She could see nothing.
"Who is it?" she asked.
"Hush." She had spoken in her ordinary tones. "Not so loud. It 's dangerous."