"You are as good a nurse as I could wish," said the doctor, "but I am afraid you will wear yourself out."
"No fear of that," Ingeborg had answered, "and I want to do all I can for poor Auntie—you know how she hates to have anyone else in the room."
"Well, in five days I shall be able to tell, you can do without help till then, and afterwards if it is necessary—"
The way he spoke the last words, however, gave but little hope of such a contingency arising and Ingeborg's eyes filled with tears.
Fru Boyesen had lain most of the time in a heavy stupor, waking occasionally to fits of delirium when her strong will and habit of command made it very difficult for Ingeborg to keep her in bed. When she raved it was always about Ragna who was coming to pay a visit and in whose honour due preparation must be made, or Ragna who would not come and refused to give ear to her Aunt's pleading, or it was Ragna ill and lonely who must be helped,—but always Ragna, nothing but Ragna.
The poor old soul, debarred by her own action from the natural outlet of her affection, nay adoration, for her heart's darling, had brooded over her sorrow, feeding on her own repressed love. Deprived of outward expression, she bowed down in secret before the idol enshrined in her heart. All these years she had kept up the sham of an unforgiving spirit, had worn her mask of hardness, never once betraying herself to anyone except the watchful Ingeborg, and now that delirium had loosened her tongue, she raved on, babbling like a child of that which was nearest her heart, while Ingeborg marvelled somewhat bitterly at all the misspent effort of repression, when so much good might have been done, so much pain avoided.
Ragna thought herself thoroughly on her guard, when writing to her sister, little dreaming how much Ingeborg read between the lines, more from what was omitted than from what was said, though she herself, to whom many things had grown "through custom stale" mentioned them casually, as though quite in the ordinary course of events, things which to the unaccustomed eyes of Ingeborg seemed unbearable to the last degree, little meannesses on the part of Valentini, his way of opening her letters, his habit of spending the evenings away from home and the like.
When Aunt Gitta fell ill, Ingeborg's first impulse had been to telegraph for Ragna, sure that her presence would set all right, but the doctor said that five days would decide everything, one way or the other, and three times five days was the shortest space of time in which it would be possible for Ragna to reach her Aunt.
There had been but little delirium to-day, at most a gentle wandering, the greater part of the time the old woman lay oblivious to her surroundings, lost to the world. To Ingeborg who took this state of coma for sleep it seemed of favourable augury, but the doctor shook his head.
"She may drift away without waking up again," he said.