“Hah!” he cried bitterly, “all alike—all alike. I thought I could trust you.”
“You can trust me, sir, to be your faithful servant, who is striving to help your recovery.”
He looked at her with the lines about the corners of his eyes very deep, but her frank, ingenuous look disarmed him, his face softened, and he said gently: “Yes, I can trust you, nurse. God bless you for a good, patient soul. And now, tell me—there cannot be such a crisis as that of which you speak—surely I should feel something of it if impending—”
He did not finish his sentence but looked piteously up at the nurse, whose smile of encouragement chased his dark thoughts away again, and he once more raised his hand.
“Yes,” he said gently. “You will tell me the truth. Sir Denton is coming down—to see me—to-day. It means that, though I do not suffer more, I am much worse?”
“Indeed, no, sir; and you are agitating yourself without cause.”
“Agitating myself without cause,” he muttered softly as he glanced at his son, and then quickly back at the candid face bent over him, while Neil’s heart beat more heavily, and there was a dreamy sensation of intense joy at his heart as he saw how full of faith and trust his father seemed.
“You are steadily getting better, sir,” continued Elisia, and her soft, low voice was full of a tender sympathy for the broken man who clung to her hand.
“Is that the truth?” he said, very slowly and impressively. “Don’t you deceive me, it would be too cruel. You will tell me all?”
She bent down over him a little lower so that he could gaze full in her clear, frank eyes, and there was a curious sense of swelling in Neil’s breast, and a jealous pang of despair as he clutched the arm of the chair tightly and thought of Alison, while the silence in the room seemed to be prolonged.