When I came to my senses I saw my father, my mother, and my aunt, all bending anxiously over me; I read their terror and alarm in their faces; my father was feeling my pulse, shaking his head, and murmuring:
"His pulse is nothing but a flutter, you can scarcely feel it."
My aunt, with her claw-like fingers, was trying to take the portrait from me, and I was mechanically hiding it and grasping it more firmly.
"But, my dear boy—let go, you are spoiling it!" she exclaimed. "Don't you see you are smudging it? I am not scolding you, my dear.—I will show it to you as often as you like, but don't destroy it; let go, you are injuring it."
"Let him have it," begged my mother, "the boy is not well."
"Of all things to ask!" replied the old maid. "Let him have it! And who will paint another like this—or make me as I was then? Today nobody paints miniatures—it is a thing of the past, and I also am a thing of the past, and I am not what is represented there!"
My eyes dilated with horror; my fingers released their hold on the picture. I don't know how I was able to articulate:
"You—the portrait—is you?"
"Don't you think I am as pretty now, boy? Bah! one is better looking at twenty-three than at—than at—I don't know what, for I have forgotten how old I am!"
My head drooped and I almost fainted again; anyway, my father lifted me in his arms on to the bed, and made me swallow some tablespoonfuls of port.