Angela examined the potions and unguents on the table near the
bed, and read the instructions on jars and phials. One was an alexipharmic
draught, to be taken the last thing at night, another a sudorific, to be
administered once in every hour.
"I would not wake him to give him the finest medicine that ever physician
prescribed," Angela said to herself. "I remember what a happy change one
hour of quiet slumber made in Sister Monica, when she was all but dead of a
quartan fever. Sleep is God's physic."
She knelt upon a Prie-Dieu chair remote from the bed, knowing that
contagion lurked amid those voluminous hangings, beneath that stately
canopy with its lustrous satin lining, on which the light of the wax
candles was reflected in shining patches as upon a lake of golden water.
She had no fear of the pestilence; but an instinctive prudence made her
hold herself aloof, now that there was nothing more to be done for the
sufferer.
She remained long in prayer, repeating one of those litanies which she had
learnt in her infancy, and which of late had seemed to her to have somewhat
too set and mechanical a rhythm. The earnestness and fervour seemed to have
gone out of them in somewise since she had come to womanhood.
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