Rachel used to wonder whether she had shocked this mannerly young woman
by eating very ravenously; she remembered a nervous desire to be done
with that solitary repast, and to get to bed. Yet when she was there, in
the sweetest and whitest of fine linen, with a hot bottle at her feet,
and a fire burning so brightly in the room that the brass bedstead
seemed here and there red-hot, then the sound sleep that she sorely
needed seemed further off than ever, for always she dreamt she was in
prison and condemned to die, till at length she feared to close her
eyes. But nothing had been forgotten; and Rachel's last memory of that
eventful day, and not less eventful night, was of a mild, foreign face
bending over her with a medicine-glass and a gentle word.
And the same good face and the same soft voice were waiting for her when
she awoke after many hours; the fire still burned brightly, also the
electric-light, though the blind was up and the window filled with a
dull November sky. It was a delicious awakening, recollection was so
slow to come. Rachel might have been ill for days. She experienced the
peace that is left by illness of sufficient gravity.
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