“I was only a-joking, Druse,” she added, smiling.  “Come, let’s make some lemonade.”

But Druse did not forget these and other words.  She pondered over them as she lay in her stifling little dark bedroom at night, or attended to her work by day, and she waged many an imaginary battle for the beautiful, idle woman who represented the grace of life to her.

The fat janitress sometimes stopped to gossip a moment with Druse.

“Ever seen Miss De Courcy on your floor?” she asked, one day, curiously.

“Yes, ma’am, I—­I’ve seen her,” replied Druse, truthfully, the color rising to her pale cheeks.

“O Lord!” ejaculated the janitress, heaving a portentous sigh from the depths of her capacious, brown calico-covered bosom, “if I was the owner of these here flats, instead of the old miser that’s got ’em, wouldn’t I have a clearin’ out!  Wouldn’t I root the vice and wickedness out of some of ’em!  Old Lowder don’t care what he gits in here, so long’s they pay their rent!”

Druse did not reply.  She felt sure that the janitress meant Miss De Courcy’s drunken brother, and she was very glad that “old Lowder” was not so particular, for she shuddered to think how lonely she should be were it not for the back flat to the right.  Even the janitress, who seemed so kind, was heartless to Miss De Courcy because she had a drunken brother!

Druse began to find the world very, very cruel.  The days went on, and the two lives, so radically unlike, grew closer entwined.  Druse lost none of her stern, angular little ways.  She did not learn to lounge, or to desire fine clothing.  If either changed, an observer, had there been one, might have noticed that Miss De Courcy did not need as much medicine as formerly, that the hard ring of her laugh was softened when Druse went by, and that never an oath—­and we have heard that ladies of the highest rank have been known to swear under strong provocation—­escaped the full red lips in Druse’s presence.

One morning Druse went about the household duties with aching limbs and a dizzy head.  For the first since she had acted as her uncle’s housekeeper, she looked hopelessly at the kitchen floor, and left it unscrubbed:  it was sweeping day, too, but the little rooms were left unswept, and she lay all the morning in her dark bedroom, in increasing dizziness and pain.  For some days she had been languid and indisposed, and now real illness overcame her; her head was burning, and vague fears of sickness assaulted her, and a dread of the loneliness of the black little room.  She dragged herself down the hall.  Miss De Courcy opened the door.  Her own eyes were red and swollen as with unshed tears.  She pulled Druse in impetuously.

“I’m so glad you’re come.  I—­Why, child, what is the matter with you?  What ails you, Druse?”

She took Druse’s hot little hand in her’s and led her to the mirror.  Druse looked at herself with dull, sick eyes; her usually pallid face was crimson, and beneath the skin, purplish angry discolorations appeared in the flesh.