She was getting much excited.  “I think I had better leave her now,” said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.

“Perhaps you had, Miss:  but she often talks in this way towards night —­ in the morning she is calmer.”

I rose.  “Stop!” exclaimed Mrs. Reed, “there is another thing I wished to say.  He threatens me —­ he continually threatens me with his own death, or mine:  and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face.  I am come to a strange pass:  I have heavy troubles.  What is to be done?  How is the money to be had?”

Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative draught:  she succeeded with difficulty.  Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew more composed, and sank into a dozing state.  I then left her.

More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with her.  She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor forbade everything which could painfully excite her.  Meantime, I got on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza.  They were very cold, indeed, at first.  Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister.  Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and take no notice of me.  But I was determined not to seem at a loss for occupation or amusement:  I had brought my drawing materials with me, and they served me for both.

Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of imagination:  a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon, and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and a naiad’s head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf sitting in a hedge-sparrow’s nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.

One morning I fell to sketching a face:  what sort of a face it was to be, I did not care or know.  I took a soft black pencil, gave it a broad point, and worked away.  Soon I had traced on the paper a broad and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage:  that contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it with features.  Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle of it:  of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead.  Now for the eyes:  I had left them to the last, because they required the most careful working.  I drew them large; I shaped them well:  the eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large.  “Good!