[CHAPTER XXXVI.]
There was no longer any fear that Mrs. Le Roy would die. She was better. She was rapidly convalescing.
St. Leon was very happy over her recovery.
He had not known how well he loved his mother until the dread of her loss hung over him. He had been sad and gloomy over the prospect of losing her. He was light-hearted and jubilant now over her convalescence.
Not the least of his happiness was that his mother, with all the fancifulness of an invalid, ascribed her recovery to her daughter-in-law's devoted care and nursing. She would not give any credit to the physicians who had exhausted the skill of the Esculapian art for her benefit. She declared that the paid nurses were a set of careless, neglectful dolts. She was quite sure that she must have perished among them but for the love and care of her son's wife.
St. Leon and his wife both knew that the invalid was unjust to her faithful attendants, and that really they had done all they could to hasten her recovery. But they could not help being pleased and happy over her affectionate fiction; and, indeed, Laurel had devoted herself, with unsparing love and patience, to St. Leon's mother. When care and skill had failed, she had gone on her knees in prayer, though it often crossed her mind that, perhaps, God would not hear the pleadings of one who was herself living a dreadful lie of which she could not repent, because she was so blissfully happy that she could not realize the enormity of her sin.
But all doubt was over now. The gloomy shadow of the death-angel's wing no longer hung over Eden. The physicians declared that Mrs. Le Roy would live, and Mrs. Le Roy declared that her daughter-in-law had saved her life. No one gainsaid her, for they saw that the fancy made her happier, and St. Leon, if possible, loved his wife more passionately than before for her devotion to his mother.
When the long strain of fear and anxiety was over, they began to see that the faithful nurse had suffered somewhat in her tireless vigils by the couch of pain. She was thinner and paler, her eyes looked wide and dark and somber, just as they did when, almost a year ago, now, she had first come to Eden.
When St. Leon's terrible anxiety over his mother was dispelled, he began to be alarmed over his wife. It struck him that she was not looking well and scarcely happy.