“Hush!” The woman laid a finger on her lip, and glanced over her shoulder.
There was only a subdued light of a shaded lamp mingling with the flicker of the fire, and, as Salome’s eyes followed those of the nurse, they rested upon the figure of a man kneeling at the bedside, and leaning his head against the pillow where Miss Jane’s white hair was strewn in disorder.
A cry of delight, which she had neither the prudence nor power to repress, rang through the silent chamber, startling its inmates, and partially arousing the invalid. Salome forgot that life and death were grappling over the prostrate form of the aged woman,—forgot everything but the supreme joy of knowing that her idol had not been rudely shattered.
Springing to the bedside, she put out her hands, and exclaimed, rapturously:
“Oh, Dr. Grey! Were you much hurt? Thank God, you are alive and here! Indeed, He is merciful—”
“Hush! Have you no prudence? Quit the room, or be quiet.”
Dr. Grey lifted his haggard face from the pillow, and the light showed it pallid and worn by acute suffering, while a strip of plaster pressed together the edges of a deep cut on his cheek. His clothes glistened with sleet, and bore stains 121 that in daylight were crimson, though now they were only ominously dark.
The stern tones of his voice, suppressed though it was, stung the girl’s heart; and she answered, in a pleading whisper,—
“Only tell me that you are not severely injured. Speak one kind word to me!”
“I am not dangerously hurt. Hush! Remember life hangs in the balance.”