Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/479

THE AMERICAN know—were both in the house. The doctor was a clever man—that I could see myself—and I think he believed the Marquis might recover with just the right things carefully done. We took good care of him, he and I, between us, and one day, when my lady had almost ordered her mourning, my patient suddenly began to mend. He took a better turn and came up so wonderfully that the doctor said he was out of danger. What was killing him was the dreadful fits of pain in his stomach. But little by little they stopped, and before I knew it he had begun again to have his joke at me. The doctor found something that gave him great comfort—some grand light-coloured mixture, a wonderful drug (I'm sure I forget the name) that we kept in a great bottle on the chimney-piece. I used to give it to him through a glass tube; it always made him easier. Presently the doctor went away, after telling me to keep on with the medicine whenever he was bad. After that there was a different sort of person from Poitiers—he came every day. So we were alone in the house—my lady and her poor husband and their three children. Madame Urbain had gone away, with her first small child, but a baby then, to her mother's. You know she's very lively, and her maid told me she did n't like to be where people were dying." Mrs. Bread had again a drop, but she went on soon and with the same quiet consistency: "I think you've guessed, sir, that when the Marquis began to give hopes again my lady was disappointed." And once more she paused, bending on Newman a face that seemed to grow whiter as the darkness settled down on them. 449