"Have I been ill long?" I asked, and my voice sounded hollow and rather high to my critical sense.
"Two weeks, Mr. Jerrolds," she said promptly, "quite long enough, wasn't it? It has been most interesting: a very pretty case, indeed."
"What was it?"
"Inflammatory rheumatism," she said, with a gratifying absence of doubt or delay (such a relief to a sick person!) "and a great deal of fever, very high. You ran a remarkable temperature, Mr. Jerrolds."
I received this information with the peculiar complacence of the invalid. It seemed to me to denote marked ability and powers beyond the common, that fever!
"How did I get here?"
She sat in a low chair by the bed and regarded me pleasantly out of the kind, wise, brown eyes.
"I will tell you all about it," she said, "because I am sure you will be easier, but after I am through I want you to try to compose yourself and go off to sleep, because this will be enough talking for now, and I want you to be fresh for the doctor. Do you understand?"
I dropped my eyelids in token of agreement and she went on.
"You remember that you complained of feeling unwell in Paris at Mr. Bradley's house. You probably had quite a temperature then, though you might not have known it. You came directly back to Oxford, but for forty-eight hours no one knew where you were, for the people here supposed you there. Finally, when Mr. Bradley telegraphed, they grew anxious here, and while they were wondering what to do, your dog ran in, acting so strangely that they suspected something and followed him. He led them directly to you and they found you unconscious in a marshy old lane about six miles out from the town. They brought you here in a horse blanket, the Professor sent for me, and we have been taking care of you ever since. Mr. Bradley has been here twice, but you were too ill to see anybody; he saw that everything possible was being done. I shall write him directly that you are on the uphill road now, and that care and patience are all you need.