She had nearly lost her life from hunger, yet she had not sold this little jewel! Why? Because she had always regarded it as his, or because the memory of that moonlit voyage in the open boat was pleasant to her. A flush of feeling passed over his face as he thought so; and remembered his wife. What two romantic simpletons both he and this poor child would seem to her, could she know the fidelity with which the little gift had been kept, and the emotion with which he regarded it!
'Une sensitive, indeed!' he thought with emotion, recalling that epithet which his wife had contemptuously bestowed on her. A soul how little fitted for the rude realities and cruel egotisms of the world!
As he drew near, her eyes slowly opened and looked at him with a dreamy, heavy, half-conscious look.
'Do you know me?' he said gently.
She made a sign of assent.
Othmar took one of her hands in his. A great emotion stirred in him; he had always the vision of the child beside whom he had sailed across the moonlit sea, with the sweet fragrance of the orange-groves coming to them through the shadows and the stillness of the night.
'Lie still and rest, my dear,' he said to her. 'You are safe, and I am your friend. Can you understand me? Good-night. To-morrow we will talk together.'
She looked at him with comprehension and with gratitude; two large tears gathered in her eyes and fell slowly down her cheeks. She had no power to speak.
When the morrow came she was lying insensible on a bed in one of the largest chambers of the house, a room of which the window's looked out upon the green sward and tall fountains and stately trees of the gardens, and where scarcely any sound from the streets around could penetrate. Exposure and hunger had brought on pleurisy; Sisters of Charity had been sent for to attend her, and all the resources of modern science were called to her assistance. Had she been a young sovereign of a great country she could not have been better ministered to or more carefully assisted through the darkness and peril of sickness.
'Spare nothing,' said Othmar to his physicians, careless of what evil construction might be placed upon his generosity.