'Well, I do not care particularly for Chilcote; in my mind it is associated with gloom and struggles; I had nothing on earth to leave there but the fowls, the birds I spread crumbs for, the apple-trees and the flowers, and some little trifles, sketches, books, and nick-nacks that had become familiarly dear to me.'
But she did refer to the first and piercing thought of her life—Bevil Goring.
'Poor Alison!' said her father, as she kissed his brow and arranged his pillows, 'your little hands have quite enough to do for me.'
'They are diminutive members, perhaps, papa, but useful, anyway,' she replied, with a faint smile.
'Here in Antwerp there are many things you should see, poor child—the churches, galleries, museums, the Steyne. Cadbury suggests I should get a nursing sister. This is dull work for you, darling, and you must go out.'
'I could not bear to see another nursing you. It is not the custom here for young girls to go out alone, and I have no companion, no escort—not even poor little Daisy Prune now.'
'Why, there is Cadbury.'
She shivered at the name, and a gesture of impatience and anger escaped her. Well used as she had grown, in the affection of her heart, to subdue all emotions in the presence of her ailing father, to whom she had devoted herself, it was not in human nature but to feel wroth at the trickery to which she had been subjected, which had caused Daisy Prune to lose her life, and by which they might all have perished.
Her father had never ceased to urge Cadbury's suit upon her in the intervals of his strength, and as in the affectionate heart of Alison there was a painful struggle between contempt and pity, sorrow and fear—contempt for his selfishness and avarice, pity for his fallen pride, sorrow for his condition, and a great fear of her own future, for if he should die there she would be utterly alone in the world—alone and penniless in Antwerp!
Once she had thought he was nearly gone, especially on the first night he had been conveyed to the hotel from the shattered yacht at the Quai Van Dyck; but thanks to her care, more perhaps than even the skill of a Belgian doctor, he had drifted slowly but surely back from the confines of the spirit world to consciousness and what was comparative strength.