'Enteric fever takes a typhoid form at times.'
'Fear not for me—I am his cousin—his promised wife!' urged Olive, piteously.
'Come with me, then, but softly; this way,' said the surgeon, and, taking her hand, he led her across a corridor, where hospital orderlies, men of the Army Hospital Corps, nurses, and others were hovering, and where Olive narrowly escaped the shock of seeing a fever-stricken and attenuated corpse carried out, and into a plain, white-washed room, where on a camp-bed—one of those brought from Arabi's camp—Allan lay asleep.
Olive, in obedience to a mute sign from the doctor, made no nearer approach, or attempt to touch or wake him, but she restrained her heavy sobs with difficulty, for the sight of how wan and worn, hollow-cheeked and pale he was, and how every way wasted, wrung her loving heart to the core.
Kneeling down by his bedside, she lightly touched with her lips his thin white hand that lay upon the coverlit, a mute action which, in one so charming as she looked, stirred even the heart of the staff-surgeon, and then she stole softly away.
'Is there any hope?' she asked, in a choking voice.
As the doctor did not speak, she looked in his face and seemed to see her answer there.
'He cannot recover, you fear?' said she.
'I fear not, Miss Raymond,' said the doctor, in a low voice.
She leant for a moment against the table, and felt giddy.