When her prayer was ended, she turned her eyes, suffused with tears, upon her unconscious patient.
She started. The hectic crimson of the girl’s cheek had paled down, and was fast changing to a pallid hue. It seemed even that on her brow a moisture had appeared. The heavy breathing had abated, as had the moaning and uneasy movement of head and hands.
Suddenly, Lotte’s eyes opened, and she gazed feebly around her. She looked intently at the bare walls, the scanty furniture, and then earnestly upon Mrs. Bantom, who was watching her every motion with absorbing eagerness.
At length, in a low voice, she murmured, wonderingly--
“Where--where am I? Who are you? What strange place is this?”
Mrs. Bantom’s own common sense told her that the crisis was over; and, so far, the girl’s life was saved.
With a burst of gratitude, she exclaimed, clasping her hands together--
“Oh, my God, you have listened to my prayer! you have heard me, a sinner! you have spared her!”
Tears checked her voice, and she buried her face once more in the bed-clothes.
Lotte regarded her with surprise--as, indeed, she did the whole situation. She felt strangely weak and powerless. Had she been ill? What did it all mean? She repeated the question, in a low voice, and then Mrs. Bantom jumped up, and hurried to the medicine bottle. She poured out a dose, and said, as tenderly as if Lotte was her own child--
“There, drink that, like a good girl, and don’t ask a single question until you are stronger; it will be quite time enough to know all then.”
Lotte would have persisted, but Mrs. Bantom was peremptory, and she was obliged to succumb. Within ten minutes after the medicine had been administered, she was asleep.
The battle had been fought. Youth, constitution, and judicious treatment had won the victory. The abatement of the symptoms was as rapid as had been the attack of the fever, and in two days more Lotte was able to sit up in bed, and communing with herself, come to a full knowledge of the peculiarity and the distressing nature of her situation.
She had, in the interval between the crisis and the present moment, followed the directions of the doctor, obeyed his instructions, and swallowed his medicine with the intrepidity of a martyr. The result had been all that could be desired in her progress to health: fresh air was only needed to complete the rest.