The nurse and his aunt came into the room at that moment.
"Are not you feeling tired, sir?" the nurse inquired, warningly.
"Yes, John," said Miss Fane, grunting as her manner was. "Mustn't get tired."
"I am not," he replied. "Colonel Tempest and I are discussing business matters which won't wait—which it would trouble me to leave unsettled. We have not quite finished, but he is more tired than I am. It is the hottest day we have had. Will you give him a cup of tea, Aunt Flo, and bring him back in half an hour."
When he was left alone John turned his head painfully on the pillow, and slowly opened and shut one of the bandaged hands. This not altogether satisfactory form of exercise was the only substitute he had within his power for the old habit of pacing up and down while he thought.
Ought he to give the money? He had no right to make a bad use of anything because he happened to have a good deal of it. This ten thousand would follow the previous twenty thousand, as a matter of course.
Giving it did not affect himself, inasmuch as he would hardly miss it. It was a generous action only in appearance, for he was very wealthy; even among the rich he was very rich. His long minority, and various legacies of younger branches, which had shown the Tempest peculiarity of dying out, and leaving their substance to the head of the family, had added to an already imposing income. In his present mode of life he did not spend a third of it.
The thought flashed across his mind that if he had died three weeks ago, if the hinges of the door had held as firmly as the shot lock, and he had perished in that room in King Street like a rat in a trap, Colonel Tempest would at this very moment have been in possession of everything. He looked at his own death, and all it would have entailed, dispassionately.
That improvident selfish man had been within an ace of immense wealth. And yet—John's heart smote him—his uncle had been genuinely grieved to see him so ill: had been really thankful to think he was out of danger. He had almost immediately afterwards reverted to himself and his own affairs; but that was natural to the man. He had nevertheless been unaffectedly overcome the moment before. The emotion had been genuine.
John struggled hard against his strong personal dislike.