CHAPTER XVII.
“TROUBLE MAY COME TO ME ONE DAY.”
Bessie had hardly fallen asleep before the storm broke. A peal of thunder crashing over the house woke her; the next minute a flash of lightning seemed to fill her room with white light.
“What a terrific clap! It must have woke Edna,” she thought; and just as she was summoning up resolution to cross the dark passage in search of her, there was a hasty tap at the door, and Edna entered, fully dressed, and with a candle in her hand.
“Edna! what does this mean? You have not been to bed at all?” exclaimed Bessie, regarding her friend with dismay. Edna’s pale, disordered looks excited her alarm.
“No,” she returned, in a tone of forced composure, as she put down the candle with a shaking hand; “I was too nervous to sleep. I knew the storm was coming, and I sat up and waited for it; but I could not stop by myself any longer. Did I wake you, Bessie?”
“The thunder woke me, and I thought of you. I am not a bit frightened; but one cannot sleep in such a noise. Hark at the rain; a perfect deluge! Come and lie down beside me, Edna, dear. You look quite wan and exhausted.
“I have been thinking myself stupid, but I am still too restless to lie down. I feel as though I never want to sleep again, and yet I am so tired. Ah, you don’t know the feeling! One seems on wires, and all sorts of horrid, troublesome thoughts keep surging through one’s brain, and there seems no rest, no peace anywhere.” And she shivered, and hid her face on the pillow as another peal broke over the house.
Bessie did not speak for a minute, and then she said very tenderly:
“Edna, dear, I know all about it. I am quite sure that you are miserable; I have known it all the time. Pride does not help you a bit now; in your heart you are sorrowful and repentant. You would give all you have in the world to bring him back again.”
But Edna silenced her. “Don’t, Bessie, you are torturing me. I cannot bear sympathy; it seems to madden me somehow. I want people to think I don’t care—that it is all nothing to me.”