"God bless you, Miss Deronnais. Remember, I am at the inn if you need me."
IV
Mrs. Baxter dined placidly in bed at about half-past seven; but she was more sleepy than ever when she had done. She was rash enough to drink a little claret and water.
"It always goes straight to my head, Charlotte," she explained. "Well, set the book—no, not that one—the one bound in white parchment.... Yes, just so, down here; and turn the reading lamp so that I can read if I want to.... Oh! ask Miss Maggie to tap at my door very softly when she comes out from dinner. Has she gone down yet?"
"I think I heard her step just now, ma'am."
"Very well; then you can just tell Susan to let her know. How was Mr. Laurie looking, Charlotte?"
"I haven't seen him, ma'am."
"Very well. Then that is all, Charlotte. You can just look in here after Miss Maggie and settle me for the night."
Then the door closed, and Mrs. Baxter instantly began to doze off.
She was one of those persons whose moments between sleeping and waking, especially during a little attack of feverishness, are occupied in contemplating a number of little vivid pictures of all kinds that present themselves to the mental vision; and she saw as usual a quantity of these, made up of tiny details of the day that was gone, and of other details markedly unconnected with it. She saw for example little scenes in which Maggie and Charlotte and medicine bottles and Chinese faces and printed pages of a book all moved together in a sort of convincing incoherence; and she was just beginning to lose herself in the depths of sleep, and to forget her firm resolution of reading another page or so of the book by her side, when a little sound came, and she opened, as she thought, her eyes.