Calm as Marian had seemed, she was by no means calm at heart. For Joan was so close—her only child—so close after all these years of separation, and Marian could not go to her—might not venture to say—“Joan is my own!” Rashly she had given away that right, and mother and child were apart still, though so near, parted by the mother’s own deed.
Dulcibel slept heavily hour after hour, sometimes muttering a little in the early part of the night, but gradually becoming more reposeful. Marian watched beside her dutifully, but all the while her thoughts were on the other side of the passage.
Now and then she crept to the door, opened it softly, and listened with beating heart. Three times this was done fruitlessly. The fourth a broken murmur of sobs reached her ears.
Was it Joan’s voice? Marian clasped her hands together, and moved slowly towards that other shut door, drawn as by invisible cords. For the moment she forgot Dulcibel, forgot her own responsibility as a nurse, forgot everything except the wild longing to comfort Joan.
“What is the matter?” spoken low and somewhat sternly by her side, took sharp effect. Marian stood suddenly upright from her bending attitude of attention.
“Sir, I thought something was wrong in the young ladies’ room. I thought perhaps—”
“Mrs. Rutherford is in your charge, not the young ladies; and she must not be left. Can I depend upon you, Marian? If Mrs. Rutherford woke and found herself alone, the consequences might be injurious, after such a shock.”
She sighed quietly, and said—
“I was wrong, sir. I will not leave the room again.”
“Miss Rutherford will come to me if anything is needed. But the less said to Miss Brooke to-night about her father’s state, the better for her,” Leonard breathed.