"I'll bring or send you something to eat—not too much. And later on I'll give you a sleeping powder. With that head of yours you may have trouble in getting to sleep. Understand, I'm doing this for your father's son, and not because you've any right yourself to consideration."
Ste. Marie raised himself with difficulty, on one elbow.
"Wait!" said he. "Wait a moment!" and the other halted just inside the door.
"You seem to have known my father," said Ste. Marie, "and to have respected him. For my father's sake will you listen to me for five minutes?"
"No, I won't!" said the Irishman sharply, "so you may as well hold your tongue. Nothing you can say to me or to any one in this house will have the slightest effect. We know what you came spying here for. We know all about it."
"Yes," said Ste. Marie with a little sigh, and he fell back upon the pillows. "Yes, I suppose you do. I was rather a fool to speak. You wouldn't all be doing what you're doing if words could affect you. I was a fool to speak." The Irishman stared at him for another moment and went out of the room, closing the door behind him.
So he was left once more alone to his pain and his bitter self-reproaches, and his wild and futile plans for escape. But O'Hara returned in an hour or thereabouts with food for him—a cup of broth and a slice of bread; and when Ste. Marie had eaten these, the Irishman looked once more to his wounded leg, and gave him a sleeping powder dissolved in water.
He lay restless and wide-eyed for an hour, and then drifted away through intermediate mists into a sleep full of horrible dreams, but it was at least relief from bodily suffering; and when he awoke in the morning his headache was almost gone.
He awoke to sunshine and fresh sweet odours, and the twittering of birds. By good chance O'Hara had been the last to enter the room on the evening before, and so no one had come to close the shutters or draw the blinds. The windows were open wide, and the morning breeze, very soft and aromatic, blew in and out and filled the place with sweetness. The room was a corner room with windows that looked south and east, and the early sun slanted in and lay in golden squares across the floor.
Ste. Marie opened his eyes with none of the dazed bewilderment that he might have expected. The events of the preceding day came back to him instantly and without shock. He put up an experimental hand and found that his head was still very sore where he had struck it in falling, but the ache was almost gone. He tried to stir his leg, and a protesting pain shot through it. It burned dully even when it was quiet, but the pain was not at all severe. He realised that he was to get off rather well, considering what might have happened, and he was so grateful for this that he almost forgot to be angry with himself over his monumental folly.