ented her from running up to my rooms.
I saw that she was now quite full of a particular reason; it threw her
forward--made her seize me, as I rose to meet her, by the arm.

"My aunt is very ill; I think she is dying!"

"Never in the world," I answered bitterly. "Don't you be afraid!"

"Do go for a doctor--do, do! Olimpia is gone for the one we always have,
but she doesn't come back; I don't know what has happened to her. I told
her that if he was not at home she was to follow him where he had gone;
but apparently she is following him all over Venice. I don't know what
to do--she looks so as if she were sinking."

"May I see her, may I judge?" I asked. "Of course I shall be delighted
to bring someone; but hadn't we better send my man instead, so that I
may stay with you?"

Miss Tita assented to this and I dispatched my servant for the best
doctor in the neighborhood. I hurried downstairs with her, and on the
way she told me that an hour after I quitted them in the afternoon Miss
Bordereau had had an attack of "oppression," a terrible difficulty in
breathing. This had subsided but had left her so exhausted that she did
not come up: she seemed all gone. I repeated that she was not gone, that
she would not go yet; whereupon Miss Tita gave me a sharper sidelong
glance than she had ever directed at me and said, "Really, what do you
mean? I suppose you don't accuse her of making believe!" I forget what
reply I made to this, but I grant that in my heart I thought the old
woman capable of any weird maneuver. Miss Tita wanted to know what I
had done to her; her aunt had told her that I had made her so angry. I
declared I had done nothing--I had been exceedingly careful; to which
my companion rejoined that Miss Bordereau had assured her she had had
a scene with me--a scene that had upset her. I answered with some
resentment that it was a scene of her own making--that I couldn't think
what she was angry with me for unless for not seeing my way to give a
thousand pounds for the portrait of Jeffrey Aspern. "And did she show
you that? Oh, gracious--oh, deary me!" groaned Miss Tita, who appeared
to feel that the situation was passing out of her control and that the
elements of her fate were thickening around her. I said that I would
give anything to possess it, yet that I had not a thousand pounds; but
I stopped when we came to the door of Miss Bordereau's room. I had an
immense curiosity to pass it, but I thought it my duty to re