She brought it to him in a moment, all the woman in her risen to meet the emergency, and then she placed a pillow under his head and chafed his cold hands. By the time the waiter arrived to lay the cloth for dinner L'Estrange was better. It was a kind of spasm that had robbed him of his power for the moment. He had experienced something of this kind before, and it alarmed him; understanding a little about the science of medicine himself, he knew the danger of mysterious pains, and he felt that it would not answer for him to be laid up until his work was done.
When dinner was over they went out into the night together, and the cool air revived him; but afterward, when real solitude had fallen over everything, and the child had been committed to the care of one of the women of the house, the fear of what might come quite mastered him.
L'Estrange was no coward, to shrink from physical pain. Whenever it was possible he would escape suffering (though perhaps his real horror was rather of mental than physical pain); when it was impossible he met it like a man. But this time he felt his frame was weakening. The mental rest he had craved so passionately would never come till his work was over, and in the mean time another such paroxysm as the one through which he had passed might lay him prostrate. In this case what would become of Laura? How would he prove to his wronged Margaret that his intentions with regard to her were good and true?
Even as he thought he felt the pain approaching with stealthy creeping, like a thief come to rob him of his power. He rose with difficulty from the couch on which he had been lying, and opening one of his packages drew from it the small medicine-chest he always carried. His hand shook as he turned the key, for he knew what he was doing, and had it not been for his strange position would have dreaded it far more than the physical pain, which he felt it could not cure, only put away for a time. For L'Estrange had once been in the habit of putting into him this enemy to steal away his soul. He had felt then that his intellect was being weakened—that his bodily and mental powers were being destroyed; he had fought with the weakness and had conquered it.
But as he took out the little well-known phial, with its dark liquid, once so precious, he felt that another victory would be still more dearly bought, and he trembled. Necessity, however, is strong and knows no law. While he hesitated the pain gained ground.
Hastily he poured out a strong dose, drank it, and slept a heavy, uneasy sleep, broken by dreams and distorted images of reality, while through them all the keen finger of pain found its way, touching his heart and chilling its warm life. But even this semblance of sleep was better than the dismal wakefulness.
He got up better, and found that the pain whose ravages he had been dreading had left him. He sighed as he rose. An inner consciousness told him it was only for a time. Through that day the effects of the potion of the night followed him. Even Laura, child as she was, remarked the change. There was about her friend a certain languor, an absence of vital energy. He could scarcely rouse himself, even to take the steps needful for the accomplishment of the object that had brought them so far.
Toward the next evening, however, the effects of his dose began to lessen. He regained something of his physical energy, and in the gathering twilight started, without the child, for the address of the agent who held the information they required.
Laura had been restless and uneasy during the whole day, startled with the slightest noise, watching curiously all who came in and went out; for now that the time, as she believed, was very near for her meeting with this unknown father, she began to feel vaguely afraid.
"You are going to find him," she said as her companion came booted and cloaked into the room where she was sitting.