“A week is not long,” encouraged the sympathetic old doctor. “And we have to humor the whims of nurses as well as invalids, you know. After all, it will do you more good to exercise your newly gained strength in the open air than pottering about a sick room.”
Royall grumbled, but he obeyed, taking rooms at the hotel, and calling each day at the cottage.
And he managed to kill time and enjoy himself in many ways, despite his solicitude over Daisie. He boated, drove, and walked with some congenial friends he made at the hotel, and his strength and his good looks returned fast. The days flew fast and pleasantly.
When the week was up, the grim nurse herself came to meet him when he called to inquire for Daisie.
“She is improving every day, but very slowly, and I have let her sit up in an easy-chair to-day for the first time,” she said.
“Does she know I am here?” he asked hopefully, eagerly.
“I broke it to her gently this morning, but still the shock was great. Perhaps it was from joy at hearing you were well again,” said the nurse, who could not understand a fact that she easily perceived—that the invalid seemed to have a secret shrinking from him.
As she knew none of the circumstances of the strange marriage, she felt convinced that the young wife must have had a quarrel with her husband before she came to visit her aunt.
How could she gauge the strange despair of Daisie when she learned that her duty would be harder than ever now? That instead of playing the rôle of friend and sister, as heretofore, she must assume the real status of a wife?
No wonder that she fainted, and that the nurse was sadly frightened ere she restored her to consciousness.