As Dickey Savage came plunging up the slope, roaring with excited joy, she said to Ouentin, her voice low and intense:
“I know now that you saved me from a worse fate than death, Phil, and, if you ask, I will forgive as I hope you will forgive me. Courant was Ugo's tool, and I had the truth from him. You are the truest, the best of friends, and I should—”
“Stop, Dorothy! Not now, some day, when you are home, after you have had time to think over all that I have done, right and wrong, I may come to you with the question I will not ask now. What I have sinned for, if you want to call it that, I will sue for some other day when the world is looking on. I will not make my prisoner pay penalty without a trial.”
“I want you to know that I do not hate you,” she argued, persistently.
“But you hated me yesterday.”
“I did not.”
Just then Dickey pounced upon them, and, as they hurried to the spot where Turk was holding the newcomer's horse, Phil briefly told how he and the little ex-burglar had accidentally stumbled upon the hiding-place of the pseudo priest after hours of hopeless search. The two pursuers, tired and despairing, were lying on the ground in front of the church ruins, taking a few moments of rest before climbing to the summit of the hill, when the luckless Courant ventured forth. With quick intuition, Turk called out the detective's name, and the ruse worked. The man they could not see gave a snort of dismay and turned to reenter the door. And then came his undoing.
Turk was the general who planned the return to the castle. He insisted that Quentin, who was very weak, take Miss Garrison upon the horse's back and ride, while he and Savage walked. In this way they reached the gates of Craneycrow. It was like the home-coming of loved ones who had been absent for years. Three women were in tears, and all of the men were in smiles. Quentin's was the smile of one bordering on delirium, however. A chill broke over him, and the fever in his body renewed its disputed sway. An hour later he was in bed, and Turk, dispatched by Dorothy Garrison, was riding to the nearest town for a physician, much against the wishes of the sick man. He stubbornly insisted that he would start with her for Brussels within twenty-four hours, and it was not until the doctor told him that he was in extreme danger of pneumonia that he consented to keep to his bed.
Resolutely he checked all desire to cry his love into the ear of the gentle nurse who sat with him for hours. He would not grant himself the slightest deviation from the course he had sworn to follow, and he suffered more from restraint than from fever. She found herself longing for the moment when he would call her to him and pour out the love that would not be denied. He never spoke but she hoped for signs of surrender; he never looked at her that she did not expect his lips to utter the story his eyes were telling, What he endured in that week of fever, under the strain of love's nursing, only he could have told—and he told nothing. How she hungered for the luxury of one word, only she knew—and confessed unconsciously.
Had the doctor told her that he was critically ill, she would have cast all restraint aside and wrung from him the words he was holding back. But the unromantic little doctor calmly broke the fever, subdued the congestion, relieved the cough and told them that the “young man would be quite well in a few days if he took good care of himself.”