"She has never been ill, my lord," Dowie had answered, "—but she is ill now."
"Save her—save it for me," he broke out in a voice she had never heard and with a face she had never seen.
That in this plainly overwrought hour he should allow himself a moment of forgetfulness drew him touchingly near to her.
"My lord," she said, "I've watched over her since she was five. I know the ways young things in her state need to have about them to give them strength and help. Thank the Lord she's one of the loving ones and if we can hold her until she—wakes up to natural feelings she'll begin to try to live for the sake of what'll need her—and what's his as well as hers."
Of this she thought almost religiously as she sat by the bedside and watched.
CHAPTER XXVI
The doctor rode up the climbing moorland road the next morning and paid a long visit to his patient. He was not portentous in manner and he did not confine his conversation to the subject of symptoms. He however included something of subtle cross examination in his friendly talk. The girl's thinness, her sometimes panting breath and the hollow eyes made larger by the black ring of her lashes startled him on first sight of her. He found that the smallness of her appetite presented to Dowie a grave problem.
"I'm trying to coax good milk into her by degrees. She does her best. But she can't eat." When they were alone she said, "I shall keep her windows open and make her rest on her sofa near them. I shall try to get her to walk out with me if her strength will let her. We can go slowly and she'll like the moor. If we could stop the awful crying in the night— It's been shaking her to pieces for weeks and weeks— It's the kind that there's no checking when it once begins. It's beyond her poor bit of strength to hold it back. I saw how hard she tried—for my sake. It's the crying that's most dangerous of all."