Throughout the meal, the lady kept up a running fire of talk—the graceful chitchat that sits so well on pretty lips. She spoke of the coming Races; of the last Government House Ball; of the untimely death of Governor Hotham. To Mahony she instinctively turned a different side out, from that which had captured Polly. With all her well-bred ease, there was a womanly deference in her manner, a readiness to be swayed, to stand corrected. The riding-dress set off her figure; and her delicate features were perfectly chiselled. ("Though she'll be florid before she's forty.")
Some juicy nectarines finished, she pushed back her chair. "And now, doctor, will you come and see your patient?"
Mahony followed her down a broad, bare passage. A number of rooms opened off it, but instead of entering one of these she led him out to a back verandah. Here, before a small door, she listened with bent head, then turned the handle and went in.
The room was so dark that Mahony could see nothing. Gradually he made out a figure lying on a stretcher-bed. A watcher sat at the bedside. The atmosphere was more than close, smelt rank and sour. His first request was for light and air.
It was the wreck of a fine man that lay there, strapped over the chest, bound hand and foot to the framework of the bed. The forehead, on which the hair had receded to a few mean grey wisps, was high and domed, the features were straight with plenty of bone in them, the shoulders broad, the arms long. The skin of the face had gone a mahogany brown from exposure, and a score of deep wrinkles ran out fan-wise from the corners of the closed lids. Mahony untied the dirty towels that formed the bandages—they had cut ridges in the limbs they confined—and took one of the heavy wrists in his hand.
"How long has he lain like this?" he asked, as he returned the arm to its place.
"How long is it, Saunderson?" asked Mrs. Glendinning. She had sat down on a chair at the foot of the bed; her skirts overflowed the floor.
The watcher guessed it would be since about the same time yesterday.
"Was he unusually violent on this occasion?—for I presume such attacks are not uncommon with him," continued Mahony, who had meanwhile made a superficial examination of the sick man.
"I am sorry to say they are only too common, doctor," replied the lady.—"Was he worse than usual this time, Saunderson?" she turned again to the man; at which fresh proof of her want of knowledge Mahony mentally raised his eyebrows.