He left the room and hurried down-stairs, while Lydia bent down and laid her cheek against the patient’s burning hand. He was delirious now, and talking loudly and rapidly.
“Yes, it is there,” he kept on saying. “Count four stones from the left, press on the fifth, and it will swing around. I have it safely—do you hear?—safely.”
This went on over and over again, and as Lydia listened, something, she knew not what, made her turn her head, when it seemed to her that one of the bed curtains trembled, and that, in the gloom, a hand was softly drawing one back, that the sick man’s words might be more plainly heard.
Chapter Twenty Five.
High Words.
Looking again in the direction of the hand, but telling herself that it was fancy, Lydia sat down to wait anxiously for the doctor’s return, while Capel went on, talking more or less incoherently.
“You know I love you,” he said softly. “Katrine—darling—you will be my wife. Let the world go its own way, what is it to us?”
Lydia’s head sank lower, as the tears of misery began to fall fast.