She only muttered an incoherent something in reply, and moved her head restlessly, as if it worried her to have him hanging over the bed.
“Don’t you know me, aunt—not know Giles?” the poor fellow asked in a shocked tone, unconsciously raising his voice.
The sick woman only moaned and muttered; but Nell thought it high time to interfere, and gently plucked at his sleeve.
“I wouldn’t worry her, if I were you. The quieter she is left the sooner the fever will drop.”
“She’s worse than she has been all along,” he said, in a shocked whisper. “She has always seemed to know me before.”
“Never mind. Go to bed now, and get a good sleep; perhaps she will have come to her senses in the morning,” Nell said cheerfully; and Giles went off with a drooping head, for he had a good heart, and was warmly attached to the sick woman who had been like a mother to him.
Left alone, Nell made her preparations for keeping watch all night; then, going into the sick-room, wrapped herself in a big shawl which she had found lying on a chair, and gave herself up to the luxury of thinking.
Events had marched so quickly, that, used as she was to a monotonous life, the sudden plunge into change and activity really bewildered her.
It all began with the coming of the exhausted stranger to the Lone House on the ridge, and Nell thought of the vigil she had kept through fear lest Doss Umpey should turn him adrift at dead of night, steal his money, or do him some other harm. Following this came the night she had spent alone with poor dying Pip, and had fallen asleep to find when she awoke that the poor dog was dead.
She thought of the letter she had found in her grandfather’s pocket, with its mysterious threat, and she wondered again, as she had done so many times previously, if Dick Bronson and R. D. Brunsen had any connection with each other.