On the second day the bullet was removed from the leg, and from that moment the symptoms became more favourable. Fever abated, and the wounds looked as though they would heal "at the first intention."
"He will do well enough now," said the doctor in charge of the case; "but he will want careful nursing—better, I fear, than he can get in camp."
"Why not send him on board a hospital ship? Could he bear the journey to Balaclava?"
"Undoubtedly. I was going to suggest it."
"There is the Burlington Castle, his own uncle's ship: she is now fitted up as a hospital, with nurses and every appliance. He will soon get well on board her."
There were other and still more potent aids to convalescence on board the Burlington Castle. A band of devoted female nurses tended the sick; and amongst them, demurely clad in a black dress, her now sad white face half hidden under an immense coif, was one who answered to the name of Miss Hidalgo.
It was Mariquita, placed there by the kindness of the military authorities, anxious to make all the return possible by helping in the good work. The relationship of the captain to Stanislas was remembered by Colonel Blythe, and the Burlington Castle seemed the fittest place to receive the poor girl.
Good Captain Faulks had been taken into the secret.
"Poor child!" he had said. "I will watch over her for dear Stanny's sake. I was fond of that lad, and she shall be like a daughter to me."
At first she seemed quite dazed and stupefied by her grief. She gave up her lover as utterly lost, and would not listen to the consolation and encouragement offered.