“It is very hard, but God knows best,” poor Katy moaned, when the next day her father and Bell went without her.
“Yes, darling, God knows best,” Helen answered, smoothing the bright hair, and thinking sadly of the young officer sitting by his camp-fire, and waiting so eagerly for the bride who could not go to him now. “God knows what is best, and does all for the best.”
Katy said it many times that long, long week, during which she stayed with Helen, living from day to day upon the letters sent by Bell, who gave but little hope that Wilford would recover. Not a word did she say of Marian, and only twice did she mention Morris, who was one of the physicians in that hospital, so that when at last Katy was strong enough to venture on the journey, she had but little idea of what had transpired in Wilford’s sick room.
Those were sad, weary days which Wilford first passed upon his hospital cot, and as he was not sick but crippled, he had ample time for reviewing the past, which came up before his mind as vividly as if he had been living again the scenes of bygone days. Of Katy he thought continually, repenting of his rashness, and wishing so much that the past could be undone. Disgusted with soldier life, he had wished himself at home a thousand times, but never by a word had he admitted such a wish to any living being, and when, on the dark, rainy afternoon which first saw him in the hospital, he turned his face to the wall and wept, he replied to one who said to him soothingly,
“Don’t feel badly, my young friend. We will take as good care of you here as if you were at home.”
“It’s the pain which brings the tears. I’d as soon be here as at home.”
Gradually, however, there came a change, and Wilford grew softer in his feelings, half resolving to send for Katy, who had offered to come, and to whom he had replied, “It is not necessary.” But as often as he resolved, his evil genius whispered, “She does not care to come,” and so the message was never sent, while the longing for home faces brought on a nervous fever, which made him so irritable that his attendants turned from him in disgust, thinking him the most unreasonable man they ever met with. Once he dreamed Genevra was there—that her fingers threaded his hair as they used to do in the happy days at Brighton—that her hand was on his brow, her breath upon his face, and with a start he awoke, just as the rustle of female garments died away in the hall.
“The nurse in the second ward has been in here,” a comrade said. “She seemed specially interested in you, and if she had not been a stranger, I should have said she was crying over you.”
With a quick, sudden movement, Wilford put his hand to his cheek, where there was a tear, either his own or that of the “nurse,” who had recently bent over him. Retaining the same proud reserve which had characterized his whole life, he asked no questions, but listened to what his companions were saying of the beauty and tenderness of the “young girl,” as they called her, who had glided for a few moments into their presence, winning their hearts in that short space of time, and making them wish she would come back again. Wilford wished so too, conjuring up all sorts of conjectures about the unknown nurse, and once going so far as to fancy it was Katy herself. But Katy would hardly venture there as nurse, and if she did she would not keep aloof from him. It was not Katy, and if not, who was it that twice when he was sleeping came and looked at him, his comrades said, rallying him upon the conquest he had made, and so exciting his imagination that the fever began to increase, and the blood throbbed hotly through his veins, while his brows were knit together with thoughts of the mysterious stranger. Then, with a great shock it occurred to him that Katy had affirmed, “Genevra is alive.”