Close your eyes and try to go to sleep." She did as she was bid, and was ready enough to close her eyes.

It seemed to her presently as if something had been interposed between her aching head and that trying ray of white September sun.
Perhaps she slept peacefully for a little while after that, for though her head was still very painful, her mouth and throat felt less parched and dry.

Through this sleep or semblance of sleep, she was conscious of the same pleasant voice softly droning Paters and Aves close to her ear.
Thus she lay, during the greater part of the day.

Not quite fully conscious, not quite awake to the awful memories which anon would crowd upon her thick and fast.
From time to time the same kind and trembling hands would with gentle pressure force a little liquid food through her unwilling lips: some warm soup, or anon a glass of milk.

Beyond the pain in her head, she was conscious of no physical ill; she felt at perfect peace, and an extraordinary sense of quiet and repose seemed to pervade this small room, with its narrow window through which the rays of the sun came gradually in more golden splendour as the day drew towards noon, and then they vanished altogether.
The drony voice close beside her acted as a soporific upon her nerves.
In the afternoon she fell into a real and beneficent sleep....
But after that, she woke to full consciousness! Oh! the horror, the folly of it all! It came back to her with all the inexorable force of an appalling certainty.
She was a prisoner in the hands of those who long ago had sworn to bring The Scarlet Pimpernel to death! She! his wife, a hostage in their hands! her freedom and safety offered to him as the price of his own! Here there was no question of dreams or of nightmares: no illusions as to the ultimate intentions of her husband's enemies.