“Did Miss Beresford speak at the meeting?” I asked.
The nurse came over to my bed and insisted on slipping her thermometer under my arm. It was a useless and insulting thing to do, but I bore it in silence because I wanted to hear about Lalage’s speech. Titherington did not answer at once, and when he did it was in an unsatisfactory way.
“Oh, she spoke all right,” he said.
“You may just as well tell me the truth.”
“The speech was a good speech, I’ll not deny that, a thundering good speech.”
The nurse came at me again and retrieved her abominable thermometer. She twisted it about in the light of the lamp and then whispered to Titherington.
“Don’t shuffle,” I said to him. “I can see perfectly well that you’re keeping something back from me. Did McMeekin insult Miss Beresford in any way? For if he did——”
“Not at all,” said Titherington. “But I’ve been talking long enough. I’ll tell you all the rest to-morrow.”
Without giving me a chance of protesting he left the room. I felt that I was going to break down again; but I restrained myself and told the nurse plainly what I thought of her.
“I don’t know,” I said, “whether it is in accordance with the etiquette of your profession to thwart the wishes of a dying man, but that’s what you’ve just done. You know perfectly well that I shall not be alive to-morrow morning and you could see that the only thing I really wanted was to hear something about the meeting. Even a murderer is given some indulgence on the morning of his execution. But just because I have, through no fault of my own, contracted a disease which neither you nor McMeekin know how to cure, I am not allowed to ask a simple question. You may think, I have no doubt you do think, that you have acted with firmness and tact. In reality you have been guilty of blood-curdling cruelty of a kind probably unmatched in the annals of the Spanish Inquisition.”