The girl had left the room, and was back again quicker than John Garnet's languid senses could follow her movements. When she returned with these simple remedies, he did not fail to mark the softness of her dark eyes, the subdued grace of her bearing, the sweet and loving pity that seemed to pervade her whole being while she hovered about his couch, and administered skilfully to the wants of a wounded man. Nor was this tenderness, this sympathy, this almost maternal solicitude, in accordance with her general habits, in keeping with her type of form and feature. She looked more like a panther of the wilderness than the nurse in a sick room. The lithe and supple frame, the light and noiseless gait, the quick stealthy turn of ear and eye and limb, ready on the instant for attack, defence, or flight, all this partook of the fierce, feline nature, and all this she inherited from that mysterious race to which she belonged, whose origin history has failed to discover, whose destiny conjecture is at a loss to guess. From her gipsy ancestors she derived her tameless glances, her nimble strength, her shapely limbs with their delicate extremities, her swarthy savage beauty and light untiring step. From them, too, came the wild blood that boiled under restraint or contradiction, the unbridled passions that knew no curb of custom nor of conscience, the cunning that could conceal them till occasion offered, the recklessness that would then indulge them freely without pity or remorse.
John Garnet had never yet seen anything so beautiful as this tawny girl bending over his couch, with gold coins studding her jetty hair, with collar and bracelets of gold round her neck and wrists, with a shawled robe of scarlet and orange reaching to her naked ankles, and broad buckles of gold in her red-heeled shoes.
He thought of Cleopatra, young whole-hearted, and untainted by the kiss of an emperor; of the Queen of Sheba, before she fathomed the wisdom of Solomon. Then he thought the dark eyes looked at him more than kindly, and fell to wondering how she came here, and what relation she bore to this old man in the velvet gown who sat by his pillow with a grave attentive face. But the cordial was doing its work. Ere his wounds had been dressed, the salve spread, and the lint bandages deftly swathed round his body, John Garnet's senses lost themselves once more in oblivion; the last words he heard were in the doctor's voice. Listening for the girl's answer he fell sound asleep.
"There is no fear now," said Katerfelto reflectively. "Shall I say there is no hope? He would have made a beautiful subject, and I wanted just such an one, to bring my new discovery to perfection. Look at his chest, Waif. Did you ever see a finer specimen? Some men in my place would be incapable of this self-denial."
Waif, as he called her, turned pale under her tawny skin, but there was a fierce glitter in her eyes while she answered, "I thought he was dead you may be sure, that was why I brought you out to him. He'll get well now. So much the better! Patron! you dare not do it."
The old man smiled, stroking his velvet gown with a white well-cared-for hand.
"Dare not, or will not, or shall not," he replied. "It little matters which. No. It is an interesting case as it stands, and to cure him will be almost as instructive as to cut him up. Science, Waif, exacts from us great sacrifices, but she has also her rewards. The man will live, I think. Live probably to be ungrateful. Meanwhile, let us see who and what he is."
Thus speaking, and with a marvellous dexterity the result of long practice, he turned every one of the sleeper's pockets inside out, felt in his cravat, his bosom, his waistband, leaving no part of his dress unsearched, yet without in the slightest degree disturbing his repose. The girl, holding the lamp to assist, looked down on the prostrate figure, with a new sensation growing up in her heart, a vague wild longing that seemed to covet no less than to pity and admire.
"The outcome is unequal to the pains bestowed," said Katerfelto, holding up a light purse, a tavern bill, and a valueless snuff-box, as the fruit of his exertions. "Yet the man is well-born, Waif, and well-to-do, or I am mistaken. In due time we shall know more about him; there is no hurry. He cannot leave that bed for a week, nor this house, I should say, for a month. It's a beautiful case. Beautiful! the other gentleman's sword must have gone through to the very hilt!"
"Patron! will he die?" asked Waif with a tremble of the lip she tried hard to conceal.