“Do you think so?” Bessie looked down at it, first on one side and then on the other, as a woman always does when her dress is spoken of.
“Mr. Alan said he would have his breakfast in his room, miss,” murmured the butler, in husky respectfulness, as he returned to Bessie from carrying Miss Lynde's cup to her. “He don't want anything but a little toast and coffee.”
She perceived that the words were meant to make it easy for her to ask: “Isn't he very well, Andrew?”
“About as usual, miss,” said Andrew, a thought more sepulchral than before. “He's going on—about as usual.”
She knew this to mean that he was going on from bad to worse, and that his last night's excess was the beginning of a debauch which could end only in one way. She must send for the doctor; he would decide what was best, when he saw how Alan came through the day.
Late in the afternoon she heard Mary Enderby's voice in the reception-room, bidding the man say that if Miss Bessie were lying down she would come up to her, or would go away, just as she wished. She flew downstairs with a glad cry of “Molly! What an inspiration! I was just thinking of you, and wishing for you. But I didn't suppose you were up yet!”
“It's pretty early,” said Miss Enderby. “But I should have been here before if I could, for I knew I shouldn't wake you, Bessie, with your habit of turning night into day, and getting up any time in the forenoon.”
“How dissipated you sound!”
“Yes, don't I? But I've been thinking about you ever since I woke, and I had to come and find out if you were alive, anyhow.”
“Come up-stairs and see!” said Bessie, holding her friend's hand on the sofa where they had dropped down together, and going all over the scene of last night in that place for the thousandth time.