“You don’t know what it means. You haven’t been through it six times. I never fainted at any other time--and that scapegrace of a Hal Marksley off to college without a word. Oh, I’ll go mad!”
Relief came in a torrential flood of abuse, of self-pity. All the store that had been repressed since the early days of July poured its acrid waters over the girl. In vain Eileen sought to defend herself, to declare furiously that her mother’s accusation was untrue. In such moods, Lavinia was never careful to choose her words. When the tirade became insulting, beyond endurance, she sprang from the couch and fled to a room on the third floor where she could lock herself in and defy the family to drag her forth.
Judith went home, dumb with anguish. Would Eileen do violence to herself? Would David’s heart break? Would Lary.... She paused, panting, to frame the question: “Would Lary rise to the occasion?” On the answer hung all her hope. After an hour of thinking, such as she had never done before, she went again through the wicket gate. She would take the girl with her for the laboratory experiment--an unusually important one, that called for an extra pair of hands. Lavinia was nowhere in sight; but from the cellar came the sound of mop and broom. Absinthe might give surcease to the roué in the boulevard restaurant but for Lavinia Trench the safety-valve was hard manual labor.
The experiment, that morning, narrowly missed success. At the moment when three pairs of eyes were watching with anxious interest, the fumes from a heated retort were wafted into Eileen’s face, and she collapsed in Dr. Schubert’s arms. Judith turned off the flame beneath the mass of glowing coal and hurried to the consultation room where the girl lay, white and deathlike.
“Unfasten her corsets, quick! Her pulse is almost gone.” The physician’s command held an unwonted blend of terror. Eileen Trench was the core of his soul. He could not be impersonal, where she was concerned. At an opportune moment Sydney arrived, to lend a hand.
It was decided that the girl must lie quiet for an hour. And of course Mrs. Ascott would stop for luncheon. Luncheon! Could one eat food, with the world in shambles? She went to the divan, choking with distress. The amber eyes were half closed and great tears welled over the lids.