The silver-tongued clock remorselessly
tinkled the quarters, and Hylda lay and waited for them with a hopeless
strained attention. In vain she tried devices to produce that monotony of
thought which sometimes brings sleep. Again and again, as she felt that
sleep was coming at last, the thought of the letter she had found flashed
through her mind with words of fire, and it seemed as if there had been
poured through every vein a subtle irritant. Just such a surging,
thrilling flood she had felt in the surgeon's chair when she was a girl
and an anesthetic had been given. But this wave of sensation led to no
oblivion, no last soothing intoxication. Its current beat against her
heart until she could have cried out from the mere physical pain, the
clamping grip of her trouble. She withered and grew cold under the
torture of it all--the ruthless spoliation of everything which made life
worth while or the past endurable.
About an hour after she had gone to bed she heard Eglington's step. It
paused at her door. She trembled with apprehension lest he should enter.
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