When she reached the house she went to her room in silence, and sank on a couch in front of the fire as if she were sinking out of existence. Fluvanna, finding her there a little later, helped to undress her and went to tell John Abner that she was ill enough to have the doctor summoned. Hearing her from the hall, Dorinda did not take the trouble to contradict. The doctor did not matter. Illness did not matter. Nothing mattered but the things of which life had cheated her. Lying there in the shadowy firelight of the room, she heard the wind wailing about the corners of the house and rustling in the old chimneys. She saw the crooked shape of a bough etched on the window-panes, and she listened for the soft thud of the branches beneath the sobbing violence of the storm. Though the room was bright and warm, a chill was striking through her flesh to the marrow of her bones. Shivering by the fire, she drew the blankets close to her chin. The door opened and John Abner came in. "Can't you eat any supper, Dorinda?" Behind him, in the glare of lamplight, she saw Fluvanna with a tray in her hands. The blue and white china and the Rebekah-at-the-well tea-pot lunged toward her. "No, I can't eat a mouthful." Then changing her mind, she sat up on the couch and asked for tea. When they poured it out for her, she drank three cups. "You got a chill, Dorinda. It was raw and wet out there." "Yes, I got a chill," she replied; but it was the chill of despair she meant. "The wind is rising. We are going to have a bad storm. I suppose I'd better go out again and take a look." After he had gone, she lay there still shivering beneath the blankets, with her eyes on the low white ceiling, where the firelight made shimmering patterns. Outside, the wind grew louder. She heard it now at a distance, howling like a pack of wolves in the meadow. She heard it whistling round the eaves of the house and whining at the sills of the doors. All night the gusts shook the roof and the chimneys, and all night she lay there staring up at the wavering shadows of the flames.