"I thank you, Eric."
The doctor left, after giving strict orders that the patient should be kept quiet, so that if possible he might sleep. After an hour of anxiety, during which Eric and Sonnenkamp scarcely ventured to speak to one another, he returned; and having examined Roland again, he pronounced that the nervous system had been overstrained, and that he was threatened with nervous fever.
"Misfortunes never come singly," said Sonnenkamp. They were the only words he spoke that night, during the whole of which he watched in the adjoining room, occasionally stealing on tip-toe to the sick boy's bed to listen to his breathing.
When Frau Ceres sent to know why they did not return to the drawing-room, they sent an evasive answer and begged her to go to bed. Having understood, however, that Roland was slightly unwell, she came softly to his bedside during the night, and seeing him quietly sleeping returned to her own room.
"Misfortunes never come singly," Sonnenkamp repeated when the next morning at dawn the physician pronounced the fever to have declared itself. He ordered the most careful nursing, and wanted to send for a sister of charity, but Eric said that his mother would be the best nurse Roland could have.
"Do you think she will come?"
"Certainly."
A telegram was at once despatched to the green house, and in an hour the answer came that mother and aunt were on their way.
The news of the beautiful boy's severe illness spread rapidly through the city. Servants in all manner of liveries, and even the first ladies and gentlemen, came to inquire after him.
The noisy music of the noon parade startled Roland as it passed the house, and he screamed:—