“Better that I should go at once, sir. You will soon become accustomed to another hand. Let me take yours once, and thank you for all your kindness. I think you understand me, though I have failed with your sister. Good-bye.”
She held out her hand and he clutched it with both of his, clinging to it spasmodically as his face began to work.
“Mr Elthorne!” she cried, startled by the change. “Water,” he whispered, and he loosened one hand only as she reached to the table and then held the glass to his lips.
“Thank you,” he whispered; “thank you. I thought I was stronger. Hah!”
He lay back in silence for a time with his eyes closed, but still retaining one of Nurse Elisia’s hands. At last he opened his eyes.
“Weak now as some poor fretful child,” he whispered. “It came home then when you spoke. It cannot be for long, my child. I am only a poor broken man now, against whom his sons rebel, whose daughter is disobedient, and whose sister is ready to trample him down. Don’t leave me,” he pleaded. “Have pity on me, my child. I could not bear it. I—I should die.”
Nurse Elisia looked at him wildly.
“No, no,” she said hastily. “You feel low and weak to-day. In a short time you will have forgotten all this. I cannot—indeed I cannot stay.”
But even as she spoke she saw that her patient believed the words he had uttered, and, trembling for the consequences to one in his weak, imaginative state, she hastily promised to give up all thought of going for the present.
“Thank you—thank you,” he said, trembling as he clung to her hand. “You see how weak and childish I am. Only such a short time back and I was strong, and people hurried to obey my word or look. Now it seems as if everyone were falling away from me—even you.”