The recollection of about three days and nights succeeding this is very dim in my mind. I can recall some sensations felt in that interval; but few thoughts framed, and no actions performed.
I knew I was in a small room and in a narrow bed. To that bed I seemed to have grown; I lay on it motionless as a stone; and to have torn me from it would have been almost to kill me.
I took no note of the lapse of time—of the change from morning to noon, from noon to evening. I observed when anyone entered or left the apartment: I could even tell who they were; I could understand what was said when the speaker stood near to me; but I could not answer; to open my lips or move my limbs was equally impossible.
Hannah, the servant, was my most frequent visitor. Her coming disturbed me. I had a feeling that she wished me away: that she did not understand me or my circumstances; that she was prejudiced against me.
Diana and Mary appeared in the chamber once or twice a day. They would whisper sentences of this sort at my bedside—
“It is very well we took her in.”
“Yes; she would certainly have been found dead at the door in the morning had she been left out all night. I wonder what she has gone through?”
“Strange hardships, I imagine—poor, emaciated, pallid wanderer?”
“She is not an uneducated person, I should think, by her manner of speaking; her accent was quite pure; and the clothes she took off, though