"I thought I'd just run in and see how you were before anybody came," she said, lightly. "Dinner is at quarter to eight, you know. I do wish you could be down. We shall miss you dreadfully. Of course I sent out at the last minute and got a man to fill your place, so we shall sit down with twenty-four all right; but then—"
Here she broke off, having caught sight of the third person in the room.
"So this is the nurse Dr. Cheever sent for?" she went on. "I'm sure she'll take good care of you, John—the doctor is always so careful. And if you hadn't had somebody with you I shouldn't have liked to leave you all alone—really I shouldn't!"
With that she circled about the bed again, turning towards the door.
"I must be off now," she explained. "I can't be wasting my time on you in this way. I really ought to be down in the drawing-room now; and first, I've got to see if the flowers are all right on the table."
Her husband's eyes had followed her wistfully about the room, watching every one of her easy and graceful movements; and when at last she slipped out of the door, it was a moment before he turned an inquiring glance on the nurse, as though to discover what she thought of the brilliant vision.
The nurse came to the side of the bed with her clinical thermometer in her hand.
"You are awake now," she said, with a pleasant smile. "May I take your temperature?"
Five minutes later, when she was entering in her note-book the high degree shown by the thermometer, and when the patient had again dropped off to sleep, the first guests began to arrive for the wife's dinner party.
The thick snow made the wheels inaudible, but the nurse heard the doors of the carriages slam as those who had been invited passed through the canvas tunnel one after another. In the room next to the dressing-room assigned to her for her own use there was a rustling of silken stuffs, and there were fragments of conversation now and again so loudly pitched as to reach the ear of the young woman who sat silent in the sick-chamber. Then, when all the guests were come, the house sank again into silence, and a tall clock in a corner of the stairs chimed forth the hour of eight.