He told her all he knew: how he had come to the old house by appointment with Ferrol; had tried to get into the store-room; had found the doors bolted; had heard the noise of a wild animal inside; had run out, tried a window, at last wrenched it open and found Ferrol in a dead faint. He went to the table and brought back the broken bayonet.
“That’s all he had to fight with,” he said. “Fire of a little hell, but he had grit—after all!”
“That’s all he had to fight with!” she repeated, as she untwisted the handkerchief from the hilt end. “Why did you say he had true grit—‘after all’? What do you mean by that ‘after all’?”
“Well, you don’t expect much from a man with only one lung—eh?”
“Courage isn’t in the lungs,” she answered. Then she added: “Go and fetch me a bottle of brandy—I’m going to bathe his hands and feet in brandy and hot water as soon as he’s awake.”
“Better let mother do that, hadn’t you?” he asked rather hesitatingly, as he moved towards the door.
Her eyes snapped fire. “Nic—mon Dieu, hear the nice Nic!” she said. “The dear Nic, who went in swimming with—”
She said no more, for he had no desire to listen to an account of his misdeeds, which were not a few,—and Christine had a galling tongue.
When the door was shut she went to the bed, sat down on a chair beside it, and looked at Ferrol earnestly and sadly.
“My dear! my dear, dear, dear!” she said in a whisper, “you look so handsome and so kind as you lie there—like no man I ever saw in my life. Who’d have fought as you fought—and nearly dead! Who’d have had brains enough to know just what to do! My darling, that never said ‘my darling’ to me, nor heard me call you so. Suppose you haven’t a dollar, not a cent, in the world, and suppose you’ll never earn a dollar or a cent in the world, what difference does that make to me? I could earn it; and I’d give more for a touch of your finger than a thousand dollars; and more for a month with you than for a lifetime with the richest man in the world. You never looked cross at me, or at any one, and you never say an unkind thing, and you never find fault when you suffer so. You never hurt any one, I know. You never hurt Vanne Castine—”