Bessie crept up to her room, where she spent the rest of the night in her chair, amid a tumult of emotion which she would have called thinking.
She asked herself the most searching questions, but she got no very candid answers to them, and she decided that she must see the whole fact with some other's eyes before she could know what she had meant or what she had done.
When she let the daylight into her room, it showed her a face in her mirror that bore no trace of conflicting anxieties. Her complexion favored this effect of inward calm; it was always thick; and her eyes seemed to her all the brighter for their vigils.
A smile, even, hovered on her mouth as she sat down at the breakfast-table, in the pretty negligee she had worn all night, and poured out Miss Lynde's coffee for her.
"That's always very becoming to you, Bessie," said her aunt. "It's the nicest breakfast gown you have.""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 Ihad 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.
"No, no; I really mustn't. I hope you had a good time?""At your house!"
"How dear of you! But, Bessie, I got to thinking you'd been rather sacrificed. It came into my mind the instant I woke, and gave me this severe case of conscience. I suppose it's a kind of conscience.""Yes, yes. Go on! I like having been a martyr, if I don't know what about.""Why, you know, Bessie, or if you don't you will presently, that it was Iwho got mamma to send him a card; I felt rather sorry for him, that day at Mrs. Bevidge's, because she'd so obviously got him there to use him, and I got mamma to ask him. Everything takes care of itself, at a large affair, and I thought I might trust in Providence to deal with him after he came; and then I saw you made a means the whole evening! I didn't reflect that there always has to be a means!""It's a question of Mr. Durgin?" said Bessie, coldly thrilling at the sound of a name that she pronounced so gayly in a tone of sympathetic amusement.
Miss Enderby bobbed her head. "It shows that we ought never to do a good action, doesn't it? But, poor thing! How you must have been swearing off!""I don't know. Was it so very bad? I'm trying to think," said Bessie, thinking that after this beginning it would be impossible to confide in Mary Enderby.
"Oh, now, Bessie! Don't you be patient, or I shall begin to lose my faith in human nature. Just say at once that it was an outrage and I'll forgive you! You see," Miss Enderby went on, "it isn't merely that he's a jay; but he isn't a very nice jay. None of the men like him--except Freddy Lancaster, of course; he likes everybody, on principle; he doesn't count. I thought that perhaps, although he's so crude and blunt, he might be sensitive and high-minded; you're always reading about such things; but they say he isn't, in the least; oh, not the least! They say he goes with a set of fast jays, and that he's dreadful; though he has a very good mind, and could do very well if he chose. That's what cousin Jim said to-day; he's just been at our house; and it was so extremely telepathic that I thought I must run round and prevent your having the man on your conscience if you felt you had had too much of him. You won't lay him up against us, will you?" She jumped to her feet.
"You dear!" said Bessie, keeping Mary Enderby's hand, and pressing it between both of hers against her breast as they now stood face to face, "do come up and have some tea!""No, no! Really, I can't."
They were both involuntarily silent. The door had been opened to some one, and there was a brief parley, which ended in a voice they knew to be the doctor's, saying, "Then I'll go right up to his room." Both the girls broke into laughing adieux, to hide their consciousness that the doctor was going up to see Alan Lynde, who was never sick except in the one way.
