pushed back the lump of coal in the grate in the hope of saving it for
the morrow, and went cautiously down the hall to her room. As she passed
her mother's door, a glimmer of light along the threshold made her pause
for a minute, and while she hesitated, an anxious voice floated out to
her:

"Gabriella, is that you?"

"Yes, Mother, do you want anything?"

"Jane has one of her heart attacks. I put her to bed in my room because
it is more comfortable than the dining-room. Don't you think you had
better go back and wake Marthy?"

"Is she ill? Let me come in," answered Gabriella, pushing open the door
and brushing by Mrs. Carr, who stood, shrunken and shivering, in a gray
flannel wrapper and felt slippers.

Though Jane's attacks were familiar occurrences, they never failed to
produce an immediate panic in the household. As a child of nine,
Gabriella remembered being aroused in the middle of a bitter night,
hastily wrapped in her mother's shawl and a blanket, and hurried up the
staircase to Jane, who had broken her engagement to Charley the evening
before. Jane, pale, angelic, palpitating, appeared to draw her last
breath as they entered, while the old doctor supported her in his arms,
and Marthy, in a frenzy of service, rattled the dead embers in the
grate. It had all been horribly vivid, and when Jane had murmured
Charley's name in a dying voice, they had stood, trembling and blue with
cold, around her bed, waiting for the end. But the end had not come, and
three months later Jane was married to Charley Gracey.