“Mrs. Parke has little to do with it. His mother, Lady Frogmore, is with him, and I am here to help her. We wish to do everything ourselves.”
“But——?” gasped the nurse. She added after a moment, “You are dissatisfied with the nursing——?”
It was a struggle with Agnes not to bring forward the failure of the other nurse; but she was honorable and just, and shut her mouth close lest she should betray her. “I cannot say that,” she said, “for we have not been here. It is only natural that his mother——; and then I prefer to prepare everything for him myself.”
“To prepare everything! You must think, then, there is some reason—— Oh, here is Mr. Parke!”
That was a wonder, too; for John Parke was not an early man. And he was very pale, and looked as if he too had been up all night. As a matter of fact it was so many hours since he had been there before in the glow of the summer night which was morning, yet too early for anyone to be astir, that it seemed to him as to Agnes as if the day were already far spent. He came in looking as he had done when their anxiety was the deepest, with a cloud upon his face, and his hands deep in his pockets. “You will take your orders from Miss Hill, nurse,” he said, “and Lady Frogmore. It is natural that his mother—and my wife will not, I think, come downstairs to-day. She is asleep now, but she has had a bad night.”
“I am afraid, sir,” said the nurse, “Mrs. Parke has been doing too much.”
John Parke gave Agnes a troubled, alarmed, inquiring look, yet with a menace in his eyes as if to silence her. “Probably it’s that,” he said. And then, presently, after a pause, “It couldn’t be the fever. It’s not contagious? At least, that’s what you people say.”
“It’s not contagious; but several attacks sometimes come on in one house. May I go and see Mrs. Parke?”
“We’ll wait a little,” said John: “we’ll wait till the doctor comes. She is a little confused in her head.” He fixed his eyes upon Agnes with a great deal of meaning. “I scarcely think she knew what she was doing—last night.”
These were words that seemed so charged with meaning as to affect the air differently from other words. There seemed a little thrill in the atmosphere when they were said. And the pause that came after them was not like other pauses. There was a vibration in it of mystery and terror. And yet there was not one of the little group who quite understood what it meant. Agnes was in all the excitement of an incident which she was not at all sure was true, while John had nothing but a horrible doubt in his mind, and did not know what it was he feared. And the nurse knew nothing at all, but yet divined something perhaps more terrible than reality, if there was any reality at all. What was the mistress of the house doing last night, for which her husband gloomily said that she was not responsible? But this no one dared to say.