"And I never see the doctor when he comes to visit me," he added.
"You are always asleep when he pays his midday visit," she replied.
In the languor and pain of his illness he accepted all her statements in good faith, although chafing against his forced detention, and wondering what his publishers and his home folks would think of his strange silence. He had resolved only this morning that he would ask Carmontelle to write to them for him to say that he was sick—not wounded—only sick.
Now he looked fixedly at his strange, grim nurse, and said, sternly:
"Never admit that woman, that fiend rather, into my presence again. Do you understand me?"
"Yes, sir," Mima replied, soothingly; and he continued, anxiously:
"Now, tell me, has any one called to see me since I was brought to this hospital? I mean, except that woman, Madame Lorraine?"
"Lord, yes, sir; several gentlemen that said they was from the Jockey Club, and friends of yours. But the doctor's orders was strict not to admit anybody."
"How came Madame Lorraine to get admittance, then?" with a very black frown.
"Lord, sir, she wheedled the doctor with her pretty face!"