Mary did not venture to kiss her friend.  They all went.  Ann Mulling, who was dropping as much with sleep as grief, shuffled off last.  When she was going, Mrs. Hurd seemed to rouse a little, and held her by the skirt, saying incoherent things.

“Dear Mrs. Hurd,” said Marcella, kneeling down beside her, “won’t you let Ann go?  I am going to spend the night here, and take care of you and Willie.”

Mrs. Hurd gave a painful start.

“You’re very good, miss,” she said half-consciously, “very good, I’m sure.  But she’s his own flesh and blood is Ann—­his own flesh and blood.  Ann!”

The two women clung together, the rough, ill-tempered sister-in-law muttering what soothing she could think of.  When she was gone, Minta Hurd turned her face to the back of the settle and moaned, her hands clenched under her breast.

Marcella went about her preparations for the night.  “She is extremely weak,” Dr. Clarke had said; “the heart in such a state she may die of syncope on very small provocation.  If she is to spend the night in crying and exciting herself, it will go hard with her.  Get her to sleep if you possibly can.”

And he had left a sleeping draught.  Marcella resolved that she would persuade her to take it.  “But I will wake her before eight o’clock,” she thought.  “No human being has the right to rob her of herself through that last hour.”

And tenderly she coaxed Minta to take the doctor’s “medicine.”  Minta swallowed it submissively, asking no questions.  But the act of taking it roused her for the time, and she would talk.  She even got up and tottered across to Willie.

“Willie!—­Willie!—­Oh! look, miss, he’s got his animals—­he don’t think of nothing else.  Oh, Willie! won’t you think of your father?—­you’ll never have a father, Willie, not after to-night!”

The boy was startled by her appearance there beside him—­his haggard, dishevelled mother, with the dews of perspiration standing on the face, and her black dress thrown open at the throat and breast for air.  He looked at her, and a little frown lined the white brow.  But he did not speak.  Marcella thought he was too weak to speak, and for an instant it struck her with a thrill of girlish fear that he was dying then and there—­that night—­that hour.  But when she had half helped, half forced Mrs. Hurd back to bed again, and had returned to him, his eyelids had fallen, he seemed asleep.  The fast, whistling breath was much the same as it had been for days; she reassured herself.

And at last the wife slept too.  The narcotic seized her.  The aching limbs relaxed, and all was still.  Marcella, stooping over her, kissed the shoulder of her dress for very joy, so grateful to every sense of the watcher was the sudden lull in the long activity of anguish.

Then she sat down in the rocking chair by the fire, yielding herself with a momentary relief to the night and the silence.  The tall clock showed that it was not yet ten.  She had brought a book with her, and she drew it upon her knee; but it lay unopened.