“Let Doctor Price know I wish to see him before he goes away,” said he, in a faint voice.
“The Doctor left the Castle some time back, Sir Within,” said the man, in some astonishment.
“Ah!—very true—I remember: that will do.” Once more alone, he tried to remember what had just occurred—but he could not; and, with weary steps, he mounted the stairs slowly towards the corridor where the sick chamber stood.
“She is sleeping, Sir Within,” said the nurse, who sat outside the door to enforce silence—“sleeping, but dreaming and wandering on continually; and such strange things, too, she says.”
“What does she talk of, nurse?” said he, scarcely conscious of what he asked.
“She be talking, Sir, of being a-gathering seaweed on the rocks, and crying out to some one to take care—that the tide is gaining fast. ‘It will be soon in on us!’ she cries every moment; ‘make haste, Patsey, or we’ll lose it all?’ And then she’ll wring her hair, as if there was water in it, and tie it up short afterwards on the back of her head. I never see a young lady go on the same way before!”
“Wandering?—mere wandering?” said Sir Within, faintly. “Of course it be, Sir Within; but ain’t it a strange sort of wandering for one bred and brought up as she was?”
“When people rave, they rave,” said Sir Within, curtly. “Yes, Sir, so they does; but people born to every comfort and the like seldom talks of going out to look for firewood, or to bring home the goats from the mountains; and that poor sweet dear there won’t think of anything else.”
“You are a fool, ma’am, or you would never think of attaching importance to what a patient raves about in a fever. I wonder Doctor Price could not have found a more competent person.” And with this rebuke he retraced his steps, and sought his own room.
As he sat there, a servant entered with a note Doctor Price’s servant had just brought. He tore it open impatiently, and read: