"When she sc-sc-screams, she's all right," added Purvis; and, certainly, the most anxious friend might have been comforted on the present occasion.

"Shall I not send for a physician?" asked Kate, eagerly.

"On no account, Miss Dalton. We are quite accustomed to these seizures.

My dear sister's nerves are so susceptible."

"Yes," said Scroope, who, be it remarked, had already half finished a bottle of hock, "poor Zoe is all sensibility the scabbard too sharp for the sword. Won't you have a gla.s.s of wine, Miss Dalton?"

"Thanks, sir, I take none. I trust she is better now she looks easier."

"She is better; but this is a difficult moment," whispered Martha. "Any shock any sudden impression now might prove fatal."

"What is to be done, then?" said Kate, in terror.

"She must be put to bed at once, the room darkened, and the strictest silence preserved. Can you spare your room?"

"Oh, of course, anything everything at such a moment," cried the terrified girl, whose reason was now completely mastered by her fears.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 408]

"She must be carried. Will you give orders, Miss Dalton? and, Scroope, step down to the carriage, and bring up--" Here Miss Ricketts's voice degenerated into an inaudible whisper; but Scroope left the room to obey the command.

Her sympathy for suffering had so thoroughly occupied Kate, that all the train of unpleasant consequences that were to follow this unhappy incident had never once occurred to her; nor did a thought of Lady Hester cross her mind, till, suddenly, the whole flashed upon her, by the appearance of her maid Nina in the drawing-room.

"To your own room, Mademoiselle?" asked she, with a look that said far more than any words.

"Yes, Nina," whispered she. "What can I do? She is so ill! They tell me it may be dangerous at any moment, and--"

"Hush, my dear Miss Dalton!" said Martha; "one word may wake her."

"I'd be a b.u.t.terfly!" warbled the sick lady, in a low weak treble; while a smile of angelic beat.i.tude beamed on her features.

"Hush! be still!" said Martha, motioning the surrounders to silence.

"What shall I do, Nina? Shall I go and speak to my Lady?" asked Kate.

A significant shrug of the shoulders, more negative than affirmative, was the only answer.

"I'd be a gossamer, and you'd be the King of Thebes," said Mrs.

Ricketts, addressing a tall footman, who stood ready to a.s.sist in carrying her.

"Yes, madam," said he, respectfully.

"She's worse," whispered Martha, gravely.

"And we'll walk on the wall of China by moonlight, with Cleopatra and Mr. Cobden?"

"Certainly, madam," said the man, who felt the question too direct for evasion.

"Has she been working slippers for the planet Ju-Ju-Jupiter yet?" asked Purvis, eagerly, as he entered the room, heated, and flushed from the weight of a portentous bag of colored wool.

"No; not yet," whispered Martha. "You may lift her now, gently very gently, and not a word."

And in strict obedience, the servants raised their fair burden, and bore her from the room, after Nina, who led the way with an air that betokened a more than common indifference to human suffering.

"When she gets at Ju-Jupiter," said Purvis to Kate, as they closed the procession, "it's a bad symptom; or when she fancies she 's Hec-Hec-Hec-Hec--"

"Hecate?"

"No; not Hec-Hecate, but Hecuba--Hecuba; then it's a month at least before she comes round."

"How dreadful!" said Kate. And certainly there was not a grain of hypocrisy in the fervor with which she uttered it.

"I don't think she 'll go beyond the San-Sandwich Islands this time, however," added he, consolingly,

"Hush, Scroope!" cried Martha. And now they entered the small and exquisitely furnished dressing-room which was appropriated to Kate's use; within which, and opening upon a small orangery, stood her bedroom.

Nina, who scrupulously obeyed every order of her young mistress, continued the while to exhibit a hundred petty signs of mute rebellion.

"Lady Hester wishes to see Miss Dalton," said a servant at the outer door.

"Can you permit me for a moment?" asked Kate, in a tremor.

"Oh, of course, my dear Miss Dalton; let there be no ceremony with us,"

said Martha. "Your kindness makes us feel like old friends already."

"I feel-myself quite at home," cried Scroope, whose head was not proof against so much wine; and then, turning to one of the servants, he added a mild request for the two bottles that were left on the drawing-room table.

Martha happily, however, overheard and revoked the order. And now the various attendants withdrew, leaving the family to themselves.

It was ill no pleasant mood that Kate took her way towards Lady Hester's apartment. The drawing-room, as she pa.s.sed through it, still exhibited some of the signs of its recent ruin, and the servants were busied in collecting fragments of porcelain and flower-pots. Their murmured comments, hushed as she went by, told her how the occurrence was already the gossip of the household. It was impossible for her not to connect herself with the whole misfortune. "But for her" But she could not endure the thought, and it was with deep humiliation and trembling in every limb that she entered Lady Hester's chamber.

"Leave me, Celadon; I want to speak to Miss Dalton," said Lady Hester to the hairdresser, who had just completed one half of her Ladyship's chevelure, leaving the other side pinned and rolled up in those various preparatory stages which have more of promise than picturesque about them. Her cheek was flushed, and her eyes sparkled with an animation that betrayed more pa.s.sion than pleasure.

"What is this dreadful story I 've heard, child, and that the house is full of? Is it possible there can be any truth in it? Have these odious people actually dared to establish themselves here? Tell me, child speak!"

"Mrs. Ricketts became suddenly ill," said Kate, trembling; "her dog threw down a china jar."

"Not my Sevres jar? not the large green one, with the figures?"

"I grieve to say it was!"

"Go on. What then?" said Lady Hester, dryly.

"Shocked at the incident, and alarmed, besides, by the fall of a flower-stand, she fainted away, and subsequently was seized with what I supposed to be a convulsive attack, but to which her friends seemed perfectly accustomed, and p.r.o.nounced not dangerous. In this dilemma they asked me if they might occupy my room. Of course I could not refuse, and yet felt, the while, that I had no right to extend the hospitality of this house. I saw the indelicacy of what I was doing. I was shocked and ashamed, and yet--"

"Go on," said Lady Hester once more, and with a stern quietude of manner that Kate felt more acutely than even an angry burst of temper.