No good woman could have been more tender in her ministrations than was this bad man, though their motives would have been different—the first serving from love or benevolence, the second from selfishness, though something of pity, compunction and apprehension entered into his motive.
He dozed in his armchair by the bedside of the child, but woke whenever she moaned or tossed, and moistened her lips with flakes of ice, or cooled her forehead by a fresh application of a wet towel.
So passed the night, until in the gray of the morning, overcome by fatigue, Hanson fell fast asleep in his chair.
CHAPTER XIX
OWLET’S ADVENTURES
It was late in the morning when Hanson awoke—awoke to find the child still worse than on the preceding night. Her whole face was scarlet, her eyes now flared open, wild and bloodshot, her lips parched, her pulse beating almost too fast to be counted.
Hanson was at last very much alarmed.
Without stopping to slip on his coat, he rang the bell violently, and soon brought a porter hurrying to his door to see what was the matter.
“My child is very ill. Ask at once the clerk in the office to send for the nearest physician.”
And when the man had gone Hanson dressed himself in great haste and returned to the bedside of his stolen charge.
Dr. Paulet, whose office was on the ground floor front of the next house on the right, soon came—a fair, slight, refined-looking man of middle age.