But for General Lyon and Richard Hammond where would Drusilla now have been? Would she, could she have had the strength, when discarded by him to have struggled on, through her desolation, unsupported by their strong and tender manhood?
Alick groaned and tossed, as he thought of these things.
In fact he was beginning to see himself and others in a new light. It seemed to him now that he had wronged everybody who had been brought into close companionship and intimate relations with himself.
First, he had wronged his cousin, Anna, his earliest betrothed, in leaving her for Drusilla; but that was the least of his offenses, since the betrothal had been neither his work nor Anna’s, nor yet agreeable to the one or the other. Next, he had wronged—most bitterly wronged—his young, fond, true wife, whose love and faith had never known the shadow of turning; and this he now felt to be his greatest sin. And he had wronged his uncle, the gallant old veteran, who had always cherished him with a father’s affection. He had wronged his other cousin, that frank, affectionate, “unlucky dog,” who was always ready to forgive and forget, and to be as fast friends as ever. He had wronged the noble Prince Ernest, by assaulting him like a bully, upon no provocation, and driving him into an unseemly duel.
Good Heavens! when he came to reckon with himself, whom had he not wronged whenever he had had the power?
No wonder he tossed and tumbled on his bed, and raised his fever, and inflamed his wounds, and protracted his recovery, and in other ways gave his surgeon a world of trouble.
But with all, as he had a magnificent constitution,—if that is not too big a word to apply to a little human organism,—he continued to convalesce.
One day he was permitted to sit up in bed for a few moments, and he felt himself much refreshed by the change of posture. The next day he sat up a little longer, with increased advantage.
At length there came a day when the patient was so much better that the surgeon ventured to leave him in the care of the valet and of the people of the hotel, and to go for a holiday to the neighboring town of St. Helier’s.
That day Alexander sat up in bed, well propped up with pillows, and waited on by Simms.