CHAPTER XVI
THE END OF ONE TOUR: THE BEGINNING OF ANOTHER
Cynthia found him lying in a darkened room. The nurse had just raised some of the blinds; a dismal day was drawing to its close, and more light was needed ere she could distinguish marked bottles, and doses, and the rest of the appurtenances of dangerous illness.
An English nurse would have forbidden the presence of a stranger; this French one acted with more discretion if less of strict science.
“Madam is his sister, perhaps?” she whispered.
“No.”
“A relative, then?”
“No; a woman who loves him.”
That heartbroken admission told the whole tale to the quick-witted Frenchwoman. There had been a duel; one man was seriously injured; the other, she had heard, was also receiving medical attention in another hotel—the témoins, wistful to avoid the interrogation of the law, had so arranged—and here was the woman who had caused the quarrel.
Well, such was the will of Providence! These things had been since man and woman were expelled from Paradise—for the nurse, though a devout Catholic, suspected that Genesis had suppressed certain details of the first fratricide—and would continue, she supposed, until the Millennium.