The blood rushed into Adela's white face, and Beeves rushed out of the room. In a quarter of an hour, Harry was with us. Adela had retired. He made a few inquiries, administered some medicine he had brought with him, and, giving orders that he should not be disturbed for a couple of hours, left him with the injunction to keep perfectly quiet.
"Take my traps up to my room again, Beeves: and tell the coach-man he won't be wanted this morning."
"Thank you, sir," said Beeves. "I don't know what we should do without you, sir."
When Harry returned, we carried the colonel up to his own room, and Beeves got him to bed. I said something about a nurse, but Harry said there was no one so fit to nurse him as Adela. The poor man had never been ill before; and I daresay he would have been very rebellious, had he not had a great trouble at his heart to quiet him. He was as submissive as could be desired.
I felt sure he would be better as soon as he had told Adela. I gave Harry a hint of the matter, and he looked very much as if he would shout "Oh, jolly!" but he did not.
Towards the evening, the colonel called his daughter to his bedside, and said,
"Addie, darling, I have hurt you dreadfully."
"Oh, no! dear papa; you have not. And it is so easy to put it all right, you know," she added, turning her head away a little.
"No, my child," he said in a tone full of self-reproach, "nobody can put it right. I have made us both beggars, Addie, my love."
"Well, dearest papa, you can bear a little poverty surely?"