“Poor boy!” she said again, very gently. “I am so sorry. You will stay with us, Tom? It will be a comfort to have you.”
“Of course I will stay,” he answered, in his abruptest fashion. “I shall sit up with Haddon to-night. You two must go to bed at once—I insist upon it.”
“Come, Beatrice,” said Monica, holding out her hand. “We must obey orders you see.”
As they went together up the broad staircase, Beatrice said, with a little sob:
“I cannot bear to think of our giving you all this trouble—just now.”
But Monica stopped her by a kiss.
“Have you not learned by this time Beatrice, that the greatest help in bearing our own sorrows is to help others with their burdens? I am grieved for you, dear, that this other trouble should have come; but Tom is very clever, and we will all nurse him back to health again. Good-night, dearest. You must try to sleep, that you may be strong to-morrow.”
The next day Lord Haddon was very ill—dangerously ill—the fever ran very high, other unfavourable symptoms had showed themselves. Tom’s face was grave and absorbed, and Raymond, who came over at his brother’s request, looked even more anxious. Yet possibly this alarming illness of a guest beneath her roof was the very best thing that could have happened, as far as Monica herself was concerned. But for his illness, Beatrice and her brother must have left Trevlyn at once; it was probable that Monica would have elected to remain there entirely alone during the early days of her widowhood, alone in her own desolation, more heart-breaking to witness than any wild abandonment of grief, alone without even those last melancholy offices to perform, without even the solemn pageantry of a funeral to give some little occupation to the mind, or to bring home in its own incontrovertible way the fact that a loved being has passed away from the world for ever.
Randolph had, as it were, vanished from this life almost as if spirited away. There was nothing to be done, no obsequies to be performed. For just a few days a faint glimmer of hope existed in some minds that a passing vessel might have picked him up, that a telegram announcing his safety might yet arrive; but at the end of a week every spark of such hope had died out, and Monica, who had never from the first allowed herself to be so buoyed up, put on her heavy widow’s weeds with the steady unflinching calmness that had characterised her throughout.
She devoted herself to the task of nursing Lord Haddon, in which task she showed untiring care and skill. All agreed that it was best for her to have her thoughts and attention occupied in some quiet labour of love like this, and certainly her skill at this time was such as to render her services almost invaluable to the patient.