Neil was back at Hightoft after his last visit to town. His father was very slowly mending, and the nurse, as he could see, was indefatigable, her actions in the sick room disarming to some extent the young surgeon’s resentment as he brooded over the fact that Alison was constantly watching, and obtained interviews with her, he felt convinced, from time to time.
He used to muse over these matters in the library, where he had surrounded himself with various works into which he plunged deeply, trying hard to forget his troubles in hard study of his profession, but too often in vain, for he was haunted by Nurse Elisia’s calm, grave face in all his waking hours.
“She has a right to prefer him,” he would say, “and I have none to complain; but it is hard, very hard.”
He visited the sick room regularly four times a day, and his behaviour there was that of a surgeon who was a stranger. The nurse was always present, and she received his orders in the same spirit, a coldness having sprung up between them that was very nearly resentment on his part, but always on hers the respect of nurse to the doctor who had the patient in charge.
Several little things had made Neil satisfied that there was a quiet understanding between his brother and Elisia, trifles in themselves, the most important being Alison’s manner when they met at meals. For there was always a quiet, self-satisfied look in the young man’s eyes which indicated triumph, a look that roused a feeling of rage in his breast that he found it hard to control.
Neil felt that if they were together a quarrel must ensue, an encounter the very thought of which made him shudder, and after visiting his father he would hurry back to the library, and try to forget everything in his books.
It was with affairs in this condition that the day on which Sir Cheltnam was to dine there came. Neil had paid his customary morning visit, and paused at the door as he entered quietly, feeling almost lighthearted as he saw the look of returning vigour in his father’s face.
The old man was talking eagerly to the nurse, whose back was toward Neil, and there was a glow of satisfaction in the young surgeon’s heart as he owned to himself that it was almost entirely Elisia’s work, her devotion to his father, which had wrought this change.
The group, too, at which he gazed pleased his eye: the invalid looking up, full of trust, in his graceful attendant’s face; and the crushed-down love in Neil’s breast began to revive again, as he thought that if he could win her his father would be ready to take her as a daughter to his heart.
Then all came over black. The scene before him was clouded, and a sense of despairing misery filled his breast.