"Mammy is to relieve him so soon as he is convinced that human skill
can do nothing for his relief," said Mabel very gravely.
Her sister-in-law's high spirits and jocular tone jarred upon her
most disagreeably, but she tried to bear in mind in what dissimilar
circumstances they had passed the last hour. If Clara appeared
unfeeling, and her remarks were distinguished by less taste than was
customary in one so thoroughly bred, it was because the exhilaration
of the evening was yet upon her, and she had not seen the
death's-head prone upon the pillows in the cheerless attic. Thoughts
of poverty and dying beds were unseemly in this apartment when the
very warmth and fragrance of the air told of fostering and
sheltering love. The heavy curtains did not sway in the blast that
hurled its whole fury against the windows; the furniture was
handsome, and in perfect harmony with the dark, yet glowing hues of
the carpet, and with the tinted walls. A tall dressing mirror let
into a recess reflected the picture, brilliant with firelight that
colored the shadows themselves; lengthened into a deep perspective
the apparent extent of the chamber and showed, like a fine old
painting, the central figure in the vista.
Mrs. Aylett had exchanged her evening dress for a cashmere wrapper,
the dark-blue ground of which was enlivened by a Grecian pattern of
gold and scarlet; her unbound hair draped her shoulders, and framed
her arch face, as she threaded the bronze ripples with her fingers.
She looked contented, restful, complacent in herself and her
belongings--one whom Time had touched lovingly as he swept by, and
whom sorrow had forgotten.
"Not asleep yet!" was her husband's exclamation, entering before
anything further passed between the two women; and when his sister
started up, with an apology for being found there at so late an
hour, he added, more reproachfully than he ever spoke to his wife,
"You should not have kept her up, Mabel! Her strength has been too
much taxed already to-night. I hoped and believed that she had been
in bed and asleep for an hour."
"Don't blame her!" said Mrs. Aylett, hastily. "I called her in as
she was proceeding to bed in the most decorous manner possible. I
may as well own the truth of my weakness. I was nervously
wakeful--the effect, in part, of the ultra-strong coffee Dr. Ritchie
advised me to drink at supper-tine--in part, of the silly sensation
I got up to terrify my friends. So I maneuvered to secure a fireside
companion until you should have dispatched your cigar. Gossip is as
pleasant a sedative to ladies as is a prime Havana to their lords."