Frau von Arnim was waiting at the door of Hildegarde's bedroom. In the half-light Nora saw only the dim outline of the usually grave and composed face, but the hand that took hers betrayed more than the brightest searchlight could have done. It was icy cold, steady, but with something desperate in its clasp.
"Nora, are you accustomed to people who are very ill?"
"My mother is often ill," Nora answered, and the fear at her heart seemed to pass into her very blood. "But surely Hildegarde—it is not serious?"
Frau von Arnim shook her head.
"I do not know," she said. "She fainted suddenly, and since then she has been in a feverish state which I do not understand. Poor little Hildegarde!"
She spoke half to herself, quietly, almost coldly. Only Nora, strung to that pitch of sensitiveness where the very atmosphere seems to vibrate in sympathy, knew all the stifled pain, the infinite mother-tenderness which the elder woman cloaked behind a stern reserve. And because the best of human hearts is a complicated thing answering at once to a dozen cross-influences, Nora's pity was intensified by the swift realisation that even her wonderful new happiness might be struck down in an hour, a minute, as this woman's had been.
"Let me look after her," she pleaded. "I can be such a good nurse. I understand illness—and I love Hildegarde."
Something like a smile relaxed Frau von Arnim's set features. The words had been so girlish in their enthusiasm and self-confidence.
"I know," she said, "and Hildegarde loves you. She has been asking after you ever since she recovered consciousness. Let us go in."
She opened the door softly and led the way into the silent room. The blinds had been drawn down, and the great four-posted bed loomed up grim and immense at the far end, seeming to swallow up the frail, motionless figure in its shadow.