“Do you think she’s dying, Roger?”
“No, no! Eliot would send for us, of course.” He began his restless walk to and fro again. “I wish we had got here before Eliot did. You could have gone in with him then.”
And here, at last, footsteps came down the stairs, across the hall, the door opened, and the doctor came in.
He was an unusual man to find buried in a country practice. A man of outstanding intellect and of a very charming presence. Between him and North a warm friendship existed.
“Ah, you have come!” he exclaimed.
He took Mrs. North’s hand and looked down at her with exceeding kindness.
“The child is very ill and I fear brain trouble,” he said. “I gather she went for a long walk yesterday and got drenched in the storm, so it is possibly aggravated by a chill. Do you know of any special worry or trouble?”
“Nothing whatever,” said Mrs. North decisively. “Except, of course, poor Dick’s death. She felt that very much at the time, and Roger thinks she has never got over it, don’t you, Roger?”
Roger nodded. For a moment he considered laying before his friend the abnormal situation in which Ruth Seer believed, and which he himself had come anyway to recognize as within the realms of possibility. But the inclination faded almost as soon as born. He had had no speech yet with Ruth, nor did it seem fair to Violet. Possibly, perhaps, some personal pride held him.
The doctor looked at him kindly. “Poor little girl! Well, she made a brave fight, I remember. Now, Mrs. North, no worrying. How old is the child? Twenty-six? You can get over anything at twenty-six! I’m sending in a nurse, and that woman upstairs is worth her weight in gold. You couldn’t have her in better hands. Now you’d like to go up and have a look at her. Don’t get worried because she won’t know you; that’s part of the illness.”