Ruth lifted her head suddenly.
"Lost lamb! Oh, father! what do these words mean?"
The gardener shook his head faintly, closed his eyes, and two great tears rolled from under the lids.
"Oh! tell me—tell me! I—I cannot bear it, father!"
That moment the surgeons, who had gone out for consultation, came back and rather sternly reprimanded Ruth for talking with their patient.
The girl rose obediently, and turned away from the bed. The surgeons saw that a scarlet heat had driven away the pallor of her countenance, but took no heed of that. She had evidently agitated their patient, and this was sufficient excuse for some degree of severity, so she went forth, relieved of her former awful dread, but wounded with new anxieties.
Two days followed of intense suffering to that wounded man and the broken-hearted girl. Fever and delirium set in with him, terror and dread with her. The power of reason had come out of that great shock. In trembling and awe she had asked herself questions.
Who had fired that murderous shot? How had the gun disappeared from behind the passage door, where Richard Storms had surely left it? Had there been a quarrel between the father she loved and the husband she adored? If so, which was the aggressor?
The poor girl remembered with dread the questions with which her father had startled her so that night, the sharp gleam of his usually kind eyes, and the set firmness of his mouth, while he waited for her answer. Did he guess at the deception she had practised, or were his suspicions such as made the blood burn in her veins?
With these thoughts harassing her mind, the young creature watched over that sick man until her own strength began to droop. In his delirium, he had talked wildly, and uttered at random many a broken fancy that cut her to the soul; but even in his helpless state there had seemed to be an undercurrent of caution curbing his tongue. He raved of the man who had shot him, but mentioned no names; spoke of his daughter with hushed tenderness, but still with a sort of reserve, as if he were keeping some painful secret back in his heart. Sometimes he recognized her, and then his eyes, lurid with fever, would fill with hot tears.