But Varney had pulled his arms free and was clutching wildly at his head-bandages with heavily swathed fingers.
"You needn't worry about me," he said in a sharp anguished voice. "Great
Scott! What's—what's wrong with my head! It's killing me."
He recovered with a speed which puzzled the old Hunston doctor even more than his previous lethargy had done. Five days later he was well enough to be lifted downstairs to the small back piazza, and here he lay blanketed up in a reclining chair for half the sunny afternoon.
A bundle of letters and telegrams lay on his covered knees; and going slowly through them, he came presently to one from Elbert Carstairs, arrived only that morning:
"MY DEAR BOY:
Words are feeble things at their best, and I know of none that would convey to you my great joy at the news that you are out of danger. By the same mail, I have learned that my other dear sick one in Hunston is quite herself again, and I say to God in gratitude upon my knees that my cup is full."
A pause in the reading here. The long hand of the nurse's clock on the window-sill had crawled half around the dial before Varney raised the letter again from his blanketed lap:
"There is much in my heart to tell you, much to beg your forgiveness for, but I shall keep it to say to you face to face. Just now the keenest point in my grief is that all this suffering I have brought upon you has been worse than unnecessary. Light has come to me in these sleepless nights, and I see now that there was a much better way to seek what I sought, a far happier path."
The letter slipped down upon the swathed knees again, and he lay staring at the blown and sunny tree-tops. Presently the door at his side opened; a man started to come through it, stopped short, and stood motionless on the threshold.
Varney slowly turned his head. In the doorway, to his dim surprise, stood Mr. Stanhope's man, Henry, bowing, unobtrusive, apologetic, ready to efface himself at a gesture like the well-trained servant he was.