"Did he tell you of Ronnie's critical condition?"
"He said Ronnie told him he had never felt fitter in his life, and added that he looked it."
Dick leapt to his feet, walked over to the window, and muffled a few remarks about Aubrey Treherne, in the curtains. Nevertheless Helen heard them.
"Is—Ronnie—ill?" she asked, with trembling lips.
Dick came back.
"Ronnie is desperately ill, Mrs. West. But, now he is safely at home, within easy reach of the best advice, we will soon have him all right again. Don't you worry."
But "worry" scarcely expressed Helen's face of agonised dismay.
"Tell me—all," she said.
Dick sat down and told her quite clearly and simply the text of his message to her through Aubrey, explaining and amplifying it with full medical details.
"Any violent emotion, either of joy, grief or anger, would probably have disastrous results. He apparently came to blows with your cousin during the evening he spent at Leipzig. Ronnie gave him a lovely thing in the way of lips. One recalls it now with exceeding satisfaction. When I saw your cousin afterwards he appeared to have condoned it. But it may account for his subsequent behaviour. Fortunately this sort of thing— "Dick glanced about him appreciatively—"looks peaceful enough."