This though a very short, was not always a very safe trip, at this season of the year, when floating blocks of ice endangered the little boat, and it was only by watchfulness and skill that it was ever accomplished safely.
From that hour Miss Grip administered the government of Promontory Hall.
She was an accomplished nurse and housekeeper, and not at all an unkindly woman, notwithstanding her quick ways. She held a consultation with the doctor on his next visit, and learned from him the facts of the case, of which she would not inquire of the servants or even permit them to speak.
“It was the most unhappy marriage I ever heard of. But then I always knew Marcel would make a mess of it,” was her only comment on the story.
Then she devoted herself to her sick nephew, who, in his delirium, was always holding imaginary conversations with his lost wife, and sealing a reconciliation, such as in the past had always followed one of their quarrels.
Even Miss Grip would sometimes smile and sometimes weep to hear him say:
“I know it, my dear. I knew you did not mean all that you said. I knew you were excited. Yes, I know, for all that, you love me, Eusebie. There, say no more about it, dear. Let us try to forget it,” and so forth, for hours, until exhaustion and stupor would follow.
It was a long illness. The February thaw had come and melted the “iceberg,” as Miss Grip called the snow-clad promontory, before Marcel de Crespigney passed the crisis of his fever, and then he was so weak in mind as well as body that another month passed away before he had gradually recovered strength enough to sit up in his easy-chair and converse a little.
Next, when he was able to bear a sustained discourse, he gave Miss Grip his own version of the fatal quarrel that had precipitated the catastrophe, not sparing himself in the least, but heaping bitter reproaches upon his own head, as he had done from the first.
“Yet,” said Miss Agrippina, “I cannot see that you were so much to blame. But, in any case, it is of no use to look back. All that you can do now is to atone in the future for what you have done amiss in the past. She has left you no child of her own; but she has left a little niece whom she loved. Be a good father to that orphan.”