"Certainly I could. Please do as you think right!"
"What about Beelzebub?" he said.
Mercer made a restless movement.
"He will be on his legs again in a day or two. One of the men must look after him."
"I shall look after him," Sybil said, with a calmness of resolution that astounded both her hearers.
Mercer put his hand on her shoulder, but said nothing. It was Curtis who spoke with the voice of authority.
"You will have to take care of her," he said bluntly. "Bear in mind what I said to you last night! I will show you how to treat the arm. And then I think I had better go. It may prevent an epidemic."
Thereafter he assumed so businesslike an air that he seemed to Sybil to be completely transformed. There never had been much deference in his attitude towards Mercer, but he treated him now without the smallest ceremony. He was as a man suddenly awakened from a long lethargy. From that moment to the moment of his departure his activity was unceasing.
Sybil and Mercer watched him finally ride away, and it was not till he was actually gone that the fact that she was left absolutely alone with her husband came home to her.
With a sense of shock she realized it, and those words of Beelzebub's—the words that she had been so resolutely forcing into the back of her mind—came crowding back upon her with a vividness and persistence that were wholly beyond her control.