She came slowly towards them—erect, gray, grim—a still handsome apparition. Paul started. To his horror, Yerba ran impulsively forward, and said eagerly: "Is he better? Can he see us now?"
The woman halted an instant, seemed to gather the prayer-book and reticule she was carrying closer to her breast, but was otherwise unchanged. Replying to Paul rather than the young girl, she said rigidly: "The patient is able to see Mr. Hathaway and Miss Yerba Buena," and passed slowly on. But as she reached the door she unloosed her black mourning veil from her bonnet, and seemed to drop it across her face with the gesture that Paul remembered she had used twelve years ago.
"She frightens me!" said Yerba, turning a suddenly startled face on Paul. "Oh, Paul, I hope it isn't an omen, but she looked like some one from the grave!"
"Hush!" said Paul, turning away a face that was whiter than her own. "They are coming now."
The house surgeon had returned a trifle graver. They might see him now, but they must be warned that he wandered at times a little; and, if he might suggest, if it was anything of family importance, they had better make the most of their time and his lucid intervals. Perhaps if they were old friends—VERY old friends—he would recognize them. He was wandering much in the past—always in the past.
They found him in the end of the ward, but so carefully protected and partitioned off by screens that the space around his cot had all the privacy and security of an apartment. He was very much changed; they would scarcely have known him, but for the delicately curved aquiline profile and the long white moustache—now so faint and etherealized as to seem a mere spirit wing that rested on his pillow. To their surprise he opened his eyes with a smile of perfect recognition, and, with thin fingers beyond the coverlid, beckoned to them to approach. Yet there was still a shadow of his old reserve in his reception of Paul, and, although one hand interlocked the fingers of Yerba—who had at first rushed impulsively forward and fallen on her knees beside the bed—and the other softly placed itself upon her head, his eyes were fixed upon the young man's with the ceremoniousness due to a stranger.
"I am glad to see, sir," he began in a slow, broken, but perfectly audible voice, "that now you are—satisfied with the right—of this young lady—to bear the name of—Arguello—and her relationship—sir—to one of the oldest"—
"But, my dear old friend," broke out Paul, earnestly, "I NEVER cared for that—I beg you to believe"—
"He never—never—cared for it—dear, dear colonel," sobbed Yerba, passionately: "it was all my fault—he thought only of me—you wrong him!"
"I think otherwise," said the colonel, with grim and relentless deliberation. "I have a vivid—impression—sir—of an—interview I had with you—at the St. Charles—where you said"— He was silent for a moment, and then in a quite different voice called faintly—