“Please don’t go,” she said, “till Halverson gets asleep. If she’ll only go to sleep I’m not ’fraid.”
On this we sat by the bed and she threw one arm across the vacant pillow.
“Halverson sleeps there,” she said, “but sometimes she keeps me ’wake with her dreams.”
It may have been half an hour later when Pelleas and I nodded to each other that, her restlessness having ceased, she would now be safely asleep. In almost the same moment we heard the outer door open and some one enter the room, with a touch of soft skirts. We rose and faced Mrs. Trempleau, standing in the doorway. She was splendid in a glittering gown, her white cloak slipping from her shoulders and a bright scarf wound about her loosened hair.
We told her hurriedly what had brought us to the room, apologizing for our presence, as well we might. She listened with straying eyes, nodded, cast her cloak on a sofa and tried, frowning, to take the scarf from her hair.
“It’s all right,” she said in her high, irritable voice; “thanks, very much. I’m sorry—the child—has made a nuisance of herself. She promised me she’d go to sleep. I went up to the ball—at the hotel. She promised me—”
Her words trailed vaguely off, and she glanced up at us furtively. And I saw then how flushed her cheeks were and how bright her eyes—
“Margaret promised me she’d go to sleep,” she insisted, throwing the scarf on the floor.
And the child heard her name and woke. She sat up, looking at her mother, round-eyed. And at her look Mrs. Trempleau laughed, fumbling at her gloves and nodding at Margaret.
“Dearness,” she said, “we’re going away from here. You’ll have a new father presently who will take us away from here. Don’t you look at mother like that—it’s all right—”