"Are you ill, father?" she asked gently.
"Yes, dear, I am afraid I am. I have been worried, Una, very worried," he said; as he leant his head rather wearily on his hand; and presently Una stole away and came back by-and-by, followed by old Marie carrying a little tray, with nicely scented tea, freshly cut slices of lemon and crisp dry toast, just as her father liked it to be served.
Monsieur Gen smiled, and tried to eat; but he soon gave up the attempt and said that he would go and lie down for a time.
Then followed sad, dark days for little Una—days when all the sunshine seemed gone out of her life; and Marie moved about the house with slow, silent steps, and her stern old face puckered up into a hundred wrinkles with worry and anxious thought.
Monsieur Gen refused to have a doctor to see him; he wanted no strange faces about the place, he said. And all through those hot August days he lay quite still in his bedroom, with the blinds down to keep out the glare of the sun; while Una sat beside him fanning him with a palm-leaf fan, or bathing his forehead with Eau de Cologne and moistening his lips with ice, which Marie obtained from the town.
"Una sat beside him, fanning him."
Then one evening, just as it was getting dark, her father opened his eyes and looked at her with a smile.
There had been a slight thunderstorm during the afternoon, and the rain was still falling; and Una thought that perhaps the cooler weather had made her father feel better.