CHAPTER XL.
When the light was fading a little, there was a new sound in Hubert Lepel's sick-room—the rustle of a silk dress, the tripping of little high-heeled shoes across the floor. Cynthia looked round hastily, ready to hush the intruder; for Hubert was much quieter than he had been, and only murmured incoherent sentences from time to time. A fresh outburst of delirium was of all things to be warded off if possible, and there was a faint hope that he might sleep. If he slept, his life, humanly speaking, was saved. But it was hardly likely that sleep would come so soon.
Cynthia looked round, prepared to rebuke the new-comer—for she had taken upon herself all the authority of nurse and queen-regent in the sick man's room; but her eyes fell upon a stranger whose face was yet not altogether unknown to her. She had seen it years before in the Beechfield lanes; she remembered it vaguely without knowing to whom it belonged. In her earlier years at school that face had stood in her imagination as the type of all that was cold and cruel and fair in ancient song or story, fable or legend. It had figured as Medusa—as Circe; the wonderful wicked woman of the Middle Ages had come to her in visions with just such subtle eyes, such languorous beauty, such fair white skin and yellow hair; the witch-woman of her weirdest dream had had the look of Florence Lepel; just as Hubert's far different features, with the dark melancholy expression of suffering stamped upon them, had stood for her as those of Fouqué's ideal knights, or of Sintram riding through the dark valley, of Lancelot sinning and repenting, of saint, hero, martyr, paladin, in turn, until she grew old enough to banish such foolish dreams. She had been a strangely imaginative child; and these two faces seemed to have haunted her all her life. That of her hero lay beside her, stricken with illness, fevered, insensible; that of the evil woman—for this Cynthia instinctively believed Florence Vane to be—confronted her with a strange, mocking, malignant smile.
Cynthia put up her hand.
"Hush!" she said quietly. "He is not to be disturbed."
"Are you the nurse?" said Mrs. Vane's cool light voice.
"I am a friend," replied Cynthia quietly. "If you wish to talk to me, I will come into the other room."
"Upon my word, you take things very calmly!" said Florence. "I really never dreamt——It is a most embarrassing situation!"
But she did not look embarrassed in the least; neither did Cynthia.
A heavier step on the boards now made itself heard, and the General's face, ruddy and framed in venerable gray hairs, pressed forward over his wife's shoulder.