“You good, silly little thing!” said Dolly, laughing. “I am not ill at all. I have caught a cold, perhaps, but that is all.”
“No you have not,” contradicted Aimée, with pitiful sharpness. “You have not caught cold, and you must not tell me so. You are ill, and you have been ill for weeks. The worst of colds could never make you look like this. Mr. Gowan might well be startled and wonder—”
“Mr. Gowan!” Dolly interrupted her. “Did he say that he was startled?”
“Yes, he did,” Aimée answered. “And that was what brought me here. He was at Bloomsbury Place last night and told me all about you, and I made up my mind that minute that I would come and judge for myself.”
Then the girl gave in. She sat down on a chair by the dressing-table and rested her forehead on her hand, laughing faintly, as if in protest against her own subjugation.
“Then I shall have to submit,” she said. “The fact is, I sometimes fancy I do feel weaker than I ought to. It is n't like me to be weak. I was always so strong, you know,—stronger than all the rest of you, I thought. Miss MacDowlas says I do not look well. I suppose,” with a half-sigh, “that every one will see it soon. Aimée,” hesitating, “don't tell them at home.”
Aimée slipped an arm around her, and drew her head—dressed in all the old elaborateness of pretty coils and braids—upon her own shoulder.
“Darling,” she whispered, trying to restrain her tears, “I must tell them at home, because I must take you home to be nursed.”
“No, no!” said Dolly, starting, “that would never do. It would never do even to think of it. I am not so ill as that,—not ill enough to be nursed. Besides,” her voice sinking all at once, “I could n't go home, Aimée,—I could not bear to go home now. That is why I have stayed away so long. I believe it would kill me!”
It was impossible for Aimée to hear this and be silent longer. She had, indeed, only been waiting for some reference to the past.