But Maud's only answer was a dreary little shake of the head.
CHAPTER XXXV
OFFER OF FREEDOM
Slowly the dreary winter days gave place to spring. March came with gusty rain-storms that swept over sea and downs; lashing the waves to fury, blotting the countryside like a torn veil. March went, smiling and wonderful, with a treacherous graciousness that deceived all nature into imagining that the winter was really gone.
At Burchester Castle, Bunny, lying perpetually flat on his back by the doctor's unalterable decree, alternated between fits of bitter complaining and fits of black despair. He suffered more from tedium and weariness than from any definite pain, and Maud found herself fully occupied once more with the care of him. The nurse was thankful to have her at hand, for Bunny was at all times a difficult patient. And to be in attendance upon him was Maud's greatest joy in those days. She watched over him with such a wealth of devotion as she had never displayed before, a devotion at which even the boy himself sometimes marvelled.
Jake came and went, but he was never with him at night. The nurse slept in his room and Maud in the one adjoining. Jake went back to his home to sleep.
He and Maud saw but little of each other. They met daily, but she avoided all intercourse with him so strenuously that only the most ordinary commonplaces ever passed between them.
She saw much more of Saltash, though he was often away. His comings and goings were never known beforehand, and he never intruded himself upon her. Only when she went in the afternoons or evenings to the music-room and, propping the door wide, played and sometimes sang to Bunny, he had a fashion of coming lightly in upon her, dropping as it seemed from nowhere, and lying outstretched upon the settee near her while he smoked his endless cigarettes, and occasionally criticized.
How he entered she never discovered; he was always there before she knew, and he never came in by the door. When she asked him, he would only jest.
"Some day I will show you my secret chamber, ma belle reine. But not yet--not yet."