CHAPTER XX
Fires of One Kind and Another
It was a very miserable morning for Carleigh. It was pretty miserable for every one, seeing that things were all at sixes and sevens, owing to the enforced mingling of two house parties; but the young baronet, with counter emotions tearing things apart deep down in the soul of him, found it especially so.
Out-of-doors was quite impossible. The heavy clouds were unloading their burden in a drenching downpour. Some brave one proposed a tramp to Carfen and a search of the cooling ruins, but found so few volunteers that the project was given over.
Bridge games were started in both the red and yellow drawing-rooms. Blissmore, the novelist, had induced Nevill Dalgries to oppose him at chess, and the pair sat in silent concentration over board and men in the library.
For a long while Sir Caryll hung about the hall in expectation of a word with Dr. Dodson on his morning visit; only to learn after something like two hours of waiting that the medical man had come and gone during that period of agony in the breakfast-room.
Nevertheless, there was some measure of relief for him in the tidings that Dodson had pronounced his patient improving steadily.
Julian Archdeacon had told him this, having had it direct from Cecile. "He doesn't say that Nina's out of danger; but he does say that with a continued absence of fresh symptoms she very soon will be."
Carleigh sighed and a faint color tinged his wan pallor. He had been pallid as a ghost ever since he told Miss Veynol about the ring. "If I could only see her," he muttered.
But Julian thought that quite impossible.