At last, as the sick-room door opens, and Guy comes into the corridor, a little figure, that for all those miserable thirty minutes has sat crouching in a dark corner, rises and runs swiftly toward him.
It is Lilian: she is trembling visibly, and the face she upraises to his is pale—nay, gray—with dread suspense. Her white lips try to form a syllable, but fail. She lays one hand upon his arm beseechingly, and gazes at him in eloquent silence.
"Do not look like that," says Guy, shocked at her expression. He speaks more warmly than he feels, but he quietly removes his arm so that her hand perforce drops from it. "He is better; much better than at first we dared hope. He will get well. There is no immediate danger. Do you understand, Lilian?"
A little dry sob breaks from her. The relief is almost too intense; all through her dreary waiting she had expected to hear nothing but that he was in truth—as he appeared in her eyes—dead. She staggers slightly, and would have fallen but that Chetwoode most unwillingly places his arm round her.
"There is no occasion for all this—nervousness," he says, half savagely, as she lays her head against his shoulder and cries as though her heart would break. At this supreme moment she scarcely remembers Guy's presence, and would have cried just as comfortably with her head upon old Parkins's shoulder. Perhaps he understands this, and therefore fails to realize the rapture he should know at having her so unresistingly within his arms. As it is, his expression is bored to the last degree: his eyebrows are drawn upward until all his forehead lies in little wrinkles. With a determination worthy of a better cause he has fixed his eyes upon the wall opposite, and refuses to notice the lovely golden head of her who is weeping so confidingly upon his breast.
It is a touching scene, but fails to impress Guy, who cannot blind himself to (what he believes to be) the fact that all these pearly tears are flowing for another,—and that a rival. With his tall figure drawn to its fullest height, so as to preclude all idea of tenderness, he says, sharply:
"One would imagine I had brought you bad news. You could not possibly appear more inconsolable if you had heard of his death. Do try to rouse yourself, and be reasonable: he is all right, and as likely to live as you are."
At this he gives her a mild but undeniable shake, that has the desired effect of reducing her to calmness. She checks her sobs, and, moving away from him, prepares to wipe away all remaining signs of her agitation.
"You certainly are not very sympathetic," she says, with a last faint sob, casting a reproachful glance at him out of two drowned but still beautiful eyes.
"I certainly am not," stiffly: "I can't 'weep my spirit from my eyes' because I hear a fellow is better, if you mean that."