“I see no reason why you should do anything at all; how long have you been tending me like this?”

“Audry has been attending you a great part of the time.”

“Then I have been ill for a long while.”

“Some little while,” she said, “but you are better now; I have been so frightened that you would never get well any more.”

“But that would not matter to you.”

Aline laughed,—“Why then I should have had all my trouble for nothing.”

“But it would have been simpler to have taken no trouble at all.”

“Simpler, but how dull; do you know this is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me?”

“A poor kind of excitement,” he said; “why, you are looking very ill yourself; do not people notice it?”