Taking the glass from the table, Gabriella bent over her sister and
implored her to swallow the drops, but, without appearing to hear her
voice, Jane still stared blankly upward, with the rigid, convulsed look
of a woman who has been stricken with dumbness. Her flaxen hair, damp
with camphor, which Mrs. Carr had wildly splashed on her forehead, clung
flat and close to her head, while the only pulse in her body seemed to
beat in irregular, spasmodic throbs in her throat.

"Don't go, mother. I'll wake Marthy," cried Gabriella, for Mrs. Carr,
inspired by the spirit of panic, was darting out of the door in her felt
slippers. Then, while the children, crying distractedly, rushed to
Jane's bedside, the girl ran out of the house and along the brick walk
to the kitchen and the room above it where Marthy lived the little life
she had apart from her work. In answer to Gabriella's call she emerged
entirely dressed from the darkness; and at the news of Jane's illness
she was seized with the spurious energy which visits her race in the
moment of tragedy. She offered at once to run for the doctor, and
suggested, without a hint from Gabriella, that she had better leave
word, on her way home, for Marse Charley.

"I knowed 'twuz comin' jez ez soon ez I lay eyes on 'er," she muttered,
for she was an old family servant. "Dar ain' no use 'n tryin' ter come
betweenst dem de good Lawd is done jine tergedder fur worse. A baid
husban'! Hi! Dar ain't un 'oman erlive, I reckon, dat 'ouldn't ruther
own a baid husban' den no husban' at all. You all is got to teck 'em de
way dey's made, en dar's moughty few un um dat is made right."

Still muttering, she stumbled down the walk and out of the gate, while
Gabriella returned to her mother's room and hurried the weeping children