[CHAPTER XVII.]
TROUBLE STILL.
NEARLY a month had passed since the day of the collision, and George Rutherford still lay in the Cross Arms Hotel. It had been impossible to move him to his own home.
He had gone very near to the gates of death. Had the scalds alone been in question, it would have been, as Mr. Forest said, a hard fight to pull him through; but there were severe injuries in addition to these. A less vigorous constitution must have succumbed.
For three weeks there came no glimmer of consciousness. He escaped much suffering thereby, and the surface wounds healed, as they hardly could have healed if he had been awake to pain, and restless under it. Danger from the scalds was not now talked of, but the doctors still looked serious, and spoke with increasing gravity of the blow to the head. Some signs of his awaking to life had shown themselves, only they were faint and feeble signs; and when he spoke it was like a little child speaking.
“What do you mean? What do you want?” demanded Joan.
All through this month Marian Brooke had not seen Joan a second time. For Joan was in close attendance upon her father at the hotel, and Marian was in attendance upon Dulcibel at the Hall.
Almost immediately after the accident Dulcibel had been ordered home by Mr. Forest; and she continued from day to day so weak and shaken as to be still quite an invalid, able to sit up only for an hour or two in the day, and strictly forbidden to see her husband. Indeed, the mention of his name, or the slightest hint of peril to his life, brought on violent hysterical attacks.
Nessie devoted herself to Dulcibel, and Marian became gradually a necessity to them both. Dulcibel took a fancy to this stranger from the first, and waywardly refused attendance from anybody else, thereby giving no little offence to the Hall servants. Marian showed calm indifference to their displeasure, and quietly submitted to Dulcibel’s will, never revealing her ceaseless desire for one more glimpse of Joan. Thus far she was known at the Hall only as “Marian,” or “Nurse.”