"He is asleep, thank God," she answered. "He came to himself for a little time while I was out this afternoon. Reilly, who is invaluable, a real staff, tells me it is healthy sleep now, not unconsciousness."
"Imagine Reilly!" said Terry, with a sigh of immense relief. "You poor darling! to think of your having to bear it alone! The Colonel was so decent about leave. He told me not to come back till you could do without me. A son's not as good as a daughter. Still, I'm better than nothing, aren't I, darling?"
"You are better than any one," his mother said, caressing his smooth young cheeks.
"You should have wired for Eileen. What's that selfish minx doing?
Making up with the lakh of rupees, I suppose?"
"Do you know I never remembered Eileen," she said, and laughed for the first time since the accident. Her heart had lifted suddenly with an irrational, joyful hope.
She wanted to get Terry to bed and a night's sleep before he knew anything about Stella's illness. In the morning the girl might be better. Terry looked very weary. He explained to her with a half-shy laugh what terrible imaginings had been his companions on the railway journey.
"By Jove, darling," he said, "I never want an experience like it again. And how the train dragged! I felt like trying to push it along with something inside me all the time till I was as tired as though I had been really pushing it. At one place the train stopped in the middle of a bog—some one had pulled the communication cord—and the guard and the fireman ran along the carriages, using frightful language, only to pull out seven drunken men going home from a fair, in charge of one small boy who was sober. He was explaining that he couldn't wake them up at the last station, and that as soon as they came awake they pulled the cord. 'Go on out o' that now, ye ould divil!' said the guard giving a kick to the last of them. I assure you I didn't feel inclined to laugh, even then, darling, though it was so ridiculous!"
She pressed him to eat, but he was too weary to eat much; and she vetoed his seeing his father before morning, being afraid that the strange pallor on the face of the sick man would frighten the boy.
She got him off at last, unwillingly, but out of consideration for her weariness. She was going to bed, she said; Reilly was taking the night watch. She had not slept all the preceding night. He had not asked about Stella, although several times she had thought he was about to ask. She hoped he would not ask. How was she to answer him if he did?
She said good-night to him in his warm fire-lit room, feeling the sweetness and comfort of having him there again despite all the trouble: and, half-way to the door, she was stopped by the question she had dreaded.