Upon this he kept silence quite a long time, and she sat down on her stool again and waited. She had nursed him and saved him, and now he would soon be well; she ought surely to rejoice, but, she knew not why, her heart was like lead. Presently he called her; he would be lifted, shifted, his pillows were hot, his bedclothes pressed on him. As she bent over him, the fretful expression suddenly was smoothed from his features.
“I remember now,” he said, with a singular gleam in his eyes. “I remember, Pomona; you kissed me.”
* * * * *
My Lord Blantyre began now to have more consecutive recollections of that time of dreams; and when the night came he felt mightily injured, mightily affronted, to find that the shadow of the watcher in the rushlight against the wall belonged to a bent and aged figure, was a grotesque profile, instead of the mild gray angel that had soothed him hitherto. So deep seemed the injury, so cruel the neglect, that the ill-used patient could not find it in him to consent to sleep, but tossed till his bed grew unbearable, pettishly refused to drink from Mall’s withered hand, was quite positive that the pain in his side was very bad again, and that his angry heart beats were due to fever.
It drew toward midnight. Again Mall brought the cooling drink and offered it patiently. Like an old owl she stood and blinked. Her toothless jaws worked.
He made an angry gesture of refusal; the cup was dashed from her hand and fell clattering on the boards. She cried out in dismay, and he in fury.
“Out of my sight, you Hecate!”
Then suddenly Pomona stood beside them. So soft her tread that neither had heard her come.
“Lord, be good to us! The poor gentleman’s mad again,” whimpered Mall, as she went down on her knees to mop.
Pomona was in a white wrapper, well starched; the wide sleeves spread out like wings. Her hair hung in one loose plait to her knees.