She was his daughter!
Paralysis!
"Ca serait le comble!" she thought in French, horrified.
Her fear became abject!
"Can I move at all?" she thought, and madly jerked her head.
Yes, she could move her head slightly on the pillow, and she could stretch her right arm, both arms.
Absurd cowardice!
Of course it was not a seizure!
She reassured herself.
Still, she could not put her tongue out.
Suddenly she began to hiccough, and she had no control over the hiccough.
She put her hand to the bell, whose ringing would summon the man who slept in a pantry off the hall, and suddenly the hiccough ceased.
Her hand dropped.
She was better.
Besides, what use in ringing for a man if she could not speak to him through the door?
She must wait for Jacqueline.
At six o'clock every morning, summer and winter, Jacqueline entered her mistress's bedroom to release the dog for a moment's airing under her own supervision.
The clock on the mantelpiece showed five minutes past three.
She had three hours to wait.
Fossette pattered across the room, and sprang on to the bed and nestled down.
Sophia ignored her, but Fossette, being herself unwell and torpid, did not seem to care.
Jacqueline was late.
In the quarter of an hour between six o'clock and a quarter past, Sophia suffered the supreme pangs of despair and verged upon insanity.
It appeared to her that her cranium would blow off under pressure from within.
Then the door opened silently, a few inches.
Usually Jacqueline came into the room, but sometimes she stood behind the door and called in her soft, trembling voice,
"Fossette!
Fossette!"
And on this morning she did not come into the room.
The dog did not immediately respond.
Sophia was in an agony.
She marshalled all her volition, all her self-control and strength, to shout:
"Jacqueline!"
It came out of her, a horribly difficult and misshapen birth, but it came.
She was exhausted.
"Yes, madame."
Jacqueline entered.
As soon as she had a glimpse of Sophia she threw up her hands.
Sophia stared at her, wordless.
"I will fetch the doctor--myself," whispered Jacqueline, and fled.
"Jacqueline!"
The woman stopped.
Then Sophia determined to force herself to make a speech, and she braced her muscles to an unprecedented effort.
"Say not a word to the others."
She could not bear that the whole household should know of her illness.
Jacqueline nodded and vanished, the dog following.
Jacqueline understood.
She lived in the place with her mistress as with a fellow-conspirator.
Sophia began to feel better.
She could get into a sitting posture, though the movement made her dizzy.