‘Hush, do we not owe to you the life of Alexis?’
The nurse then came forward and spoke gently to Irma, who smilingly said to Jack, ‘Sister Katrin says I must not talk to you any more now; but I shall come back presently. I sit some hours by your bedside every day.’
And later on she came back with her mother, the countess, a tall, stately, white-haired lady. In the evening came the young Count Alexis, who was overjoyed that Jack was at last on the highroad to recovery.
‘Where are we now?’ asked Jack presently.
‘In my house,’ smiled the count.
‘But where is that?’
‘Near Teberti, on the Katcha, fifteen miles from Sebastopol.’
Having once turned the corner, Jack began rapidly to improve, and in a week was able to sit up for an hour or two, wrapped in a costly dressing-gown and wearing slippers of the count’s.
What on earth he was going to do for clothes puzzled him, for it would be impossible for him to wear the mud-and-blood-stained rags he had been captured in.
‘Perhaps they will send me off to Sebastopol,’ he thought; ‘then it will not matter.’