"
For once in her selfish and vulgar mind the countess-dowager felt a
feeling akin to fear. In her astonishment she thought Maude must be going
mad.
"You'd do well to get some sleep, dear," she said in a subdued tone; "and
to-morrow you must get up; Pepps says so; he thinks you want rousing."
"I have not slept since; it's not sleep, it's a dead stupor, in which
I dream things as horrible as the reality," murmured Maude, unconscious
perhaps that she spoke aloud. "I shall never sleep again."
"Not slept since when?"
"I don't know."
"Can't you say what you mean?" cried the puzzled dowager. "If you've any
grievance, tell it out; if you've not, don't talk nonsense."
But Lady Hartledon, though thus sweetly allured to confession, held her
tongue. Her half-scattered senses came back to her, and with them a
reticence she would not break. The countess-dowager hardly knew whether
she deserved pitying or shaking, and went off in a fit of exasperation,
breaking in upon her son-in-law as he was busy looking over some accounts
in the library.
"I want to know what is the matter with Maude."
He turned round in his chair, and met the dowager's flaxen wig and
crimson face. Val did not know what was the matter with his wife any more
than the questioner did. He supposed she would be all right when she grew
stronger.
"She says it's _you_" said the gentle dowager, improving upon her
information.
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