She smiled when he unnecessarily cautioned her to keep out of sight. She was not at all likely to prejudice her husband’s chances of recovery, even though she never saw him again.
Her chief pleasure during the next few days was in listening to Mr Burton’s scraps of information concerning the wonderful doings and sayings of the invalid on the occasions when he went, as he usually did twice a day, into the sick-room. Even the accounts of the nourishment he took were absorbingly interesting.
Mr Burton came out of the bedroom one morning laughing, and, accompanied by Zoë, set out for his work. She looked at him wistfully as they left the hotel together. The smile still lingered in his eyes when they were out upon the road.
“I am all impatience,” she said, “to hear what amuses you. Was it something—Hugh said?”
“He called me a fool,” Mr Burton said, and chuckled,—“a very pronounced fool.” He had, as a matter of fact, called him a damned fool, but Mr Burton could not bring himself to use such an expression before a woman. “That shows a very decided improvement. I think if there had been anything handy he would have thrown it. Impatience is a healthy sign.”
“Oh!” she said, and the tears welled in her eyes so that she turned aside her face to hide them. “If you only knew how jealous I feel—of you!” And on another occasion she asked him: “Does he never mention me?”
“No,” Mr Burton answered with obvious reluctance. “You must remember,” he added in a kindly desire to soften the negative, “that since he saw you he has been so very ill that probably what happened before has been entirely wiped out. It is possible that he has forgotten seeing you, that he does not know you are here.”
That day she gathered a great bunch of wild flowers, and arranged them in a vase, and asked him to carry them to the sick-room.
“Say that a lady staying at the hotel sent them to him,” she said.
He did her bidding. He carried the vase into the bedroom and placed it on the dressing-table where the tired eyes could rest on it without effort.