She took the rocking-chair, and leaning back with a gesture of lassitude rocked gently; her white face, with the red eyes and drooping eyelids, gave sign of excessive fatigue, and on her lips there was a gloomy pout. After she had described Mr. Aked's condition in some detail and told what the doctor had said, they sat silent for a while in that tense atmosphere which seems to stifle vitality in a house of dangerous sickness. Overhead the nurse moved about, making the window rattle softly now and then.
"You have known uncle a long time, haven't you?"
"Not at all," Richard answered. "It's a very funny thing, but though I seem to know him quite well, I've not met him half a dozen times in my life. I saw him first about a year ago, and then I met him again the other day at the British Museum, and after we'd had dinner together we were just like old friends."
"I certainly thought from what he said that you were old friends. Uncle has so few friends. Except one or two neighbours I do believe you are the first person that has ever called at this house since I came to live here."
"At any rate, we have soon got to know each other," said Richard, smiling. "It isn't a week since you asked me if my name was Larch." She returned the smile, though rather mechanically.
"Perhaps my mistake about your being an old friend of Uncle Aked's explains that," she said.
"Well, we won't bother about explaining it; there it is, and if I can help you in any way just now, you must tell me."
"Thank you, I will." She said it with perfect simplicity. Richard was conscious of a scarcely perceptible thrill.
"You must have had an awful time last night, all alone," he said.