"Have I been ill?" he asked gravely.
She rose at once, bent over him, touched his hand, and murmured: "Very ill. Brain fever. Keep quiet."
She laid the tips of her fingers upon his eyelids, gently pressing them down. He let them fall, and asked no more questions. But later, after he had taken some food, he said with a smile: "Betty told me that I must wait."
Within twenty-four hours word went forth from those in authority that he would live; but to Archibald's recurrent question, one answer alone was possible. Mark had not spoken his brother's name. Archibald's anxiety became hourly more poignant. If a glimpse of love had been vouchsafed him, in order that he might realise that it lay for ever beyond his reach, then of all men he would reckon himself the most unhappy.
Mark did not break silence, when he learned that he was in his brother's house. David was allowed to visit him, but the bishop spoke only of the waifs from the slums around the mission, who had not forgotten an old friend.
"But Bagshot killed his wife," said Mark.
David changed the subject. When he said good-bye, Mark said curtly: "I've been a beast to you, Davie. Is it all right?"
Ross repeated Mark's words to Archibald, who was waiting in the passage: "I think it is all right," said he. Then he added, pressing the other's hand: "He is asking for pardon."
That night the nurse who had come to him first, and who had tended him so skilfully, sat alone with him. Her perceptions had warned her that she was in a house where tragedy had been enacted. She knew that her patient had been found, stricken down upon the death-bed of his brother's wife, that the husband had held aloof at that most solemn hour.
Presently, as she was giving Mark some broth, he asked if he had raved in his delirium. Other questions followed. He learned of Archibald's presence at his bedside, of his ministrations. Incredulity melted into astonishment and then into an expression which the nurse could not define.