“Could he have any grief?” she thought. “Could he be ill and not know it?”
“You are sure,” she said once, “my dear Claude, that you have quite recovered from your terrible accident?”
“What, mother? Accident? Oh yes; indeed I had almost forgotten.”
“And your nurses, your kindly nurses, Claude: you must never forget them, dear.”
“I’m not likely to,” he said, with on emphasis which she thought almost strange. “Never while I live.”
He gazed into the fire.
“Would not this be the right time,” he was thinking, “to tell her all: to tell her I had three nurses instead of only two?”
But no; he dared not just yet. He would not run the risk of bringing a care to her now happy face. He thought himself thus justified in putting the evil day—if evil day it were to be—further off.
Claude was no coward, as I believe the sequel of my story will show, but still he dreaded—oh, how he dreaded!—the effect which the intelligence he was bound soon to give her would have upon her.
Claude slept but little that night, and slept but ill. More than once he started from some frightful dream, in which his mother was strangely mixed up, and not his mother only, but his Meta.