”... Yet he talks well
But what care I for words? yet words do well
When he that speaks them pleases those that hear.
... But for my part
I love him not, nor hate him not; and yet
I have more cause to hate him than to love him.”
As You Like It.
There was not, however, much appearance of enmity by the following morning between these two thus strangely thrown together. All other feelings were for the time merged in increasing anxiety about poor Alys. For the night that followed her accident was a sadly restless and suffering one, and on the doctor’s early visit the next day he detected feverish symptoms which clouded his usually cheery face.
“I can say no more as to what lasting—or, comparatively speaking, lasting—injuries she may have received,” he said, in reply to Mr Cheviott’s anxious inquiries. “What we have to do at present is to try to get her over the immediate effects of the shock. An attack of fever would certainly only complicate matters, and I cannot see that she need have it if only we can keep her perfectly quiet.”
“Then there is no chance of moving her at present?” said her brother.
“It would be most unwise—bringing on the very risk I speak of,” replied Mr Brandreth, decidedly. “She is comfortable enough—thanks to Miss Western.”
“Yes,” said Mr Cheviott, “thanks to Miss Western—but that is just the point.”
“What?”
“I cannot expect Miss Western to turn into a sick-nurse to oblige absolute strangers—people who have no sort of claim upon her,” replied Mr Cheviott, haughtily.
Mr Brandreth glanced at him with some curiosity.
(“I wonder how much truth there was in those reports about Captain Beverley and Lilias Western,” he said to himself.)