The curate bent down and kissed her, and then, taking his place by the bedroom door, he remained to carry out the instructions he had received.
They were necessary, for he had not been there five minutes before the delirious girl rose from her couch, and there was an angry outcry on the part of the women. She insisted upon going to the stable to see to her mare. It was being neglected; and it was only by the exercise of force that she was kept in the room.
Before half-an-hour had passed, the doctor was back, and quiet, firm Mrs Milt, who put off her crotchety ways in the face of this trouble, took her place by the bedside, and with good effect; for, partly soothed by the old woman’s firm management, and partly by the strong opiate the doctor had administered, Leo sank into a restless sleep, in which she kept on muttering incoherently, the only portions of her speech at all connected being those dealing with her accident, which seemed to her to be repeated again and again.
It was towards ten o’clock, as the doctor was returning by the short cut of the fields to the Rectory, after having been home for a short time, that he caught sight of a couple of figures a short distance over the stile leading down to the meadows, through which the little river ran.
“Humph!” he muttered, as, in spite of the darkness, he recognised the figures, his own steps being hushed by the moist pasture, and the couple too intent upon their conversation to hear him pass.
“Humph!” he said; “poor old Moredock is right, perhaps, about the girl. Confounded hard upon the people to have such a scoundrel loose among them.”
He half-hesitated, as if he felt that it was his duty to interfere, but there was too much earnest work at the Rectory for him to speak at a time like this. And, besides, he could not have explained why, but the thought seemed to afford him something like satisfaction, for it was evident that if Tom Candlish had stooped to court pretty Dally Watlock, the Rectory servant, everything must have long been at an end between Leo and the squire’s brother, the thrashing administered by Mr Salis having been effectual in its way.
He was extremely anxious, too, about Leo; for unconsciously a new interest was awakening in him, and he felt that no case in which he had been engaged had ever caused him more anxiety than this. So he hurried on to his patient’s room, where the fever was growing more intense, and the flushed face was rolled from side to side upon the white pillow.
“Just the same, sir,” said Mrs Milt, as he asked a few eager questions. “She’s been going on like that ever since you left. Isn’t she very bad? Hark at her breath.”
“Very bad, Milt,” said the doctor gravely; “and if matters go on like this I shall send over to King’s Hampton for—”