“Sister mine, you do not speak well,” Camilla answered, gently; “he has shed so much blood for us, that he is not likely to bleed more. It is now the want of the blood, and the fever, that will make us mourn for ever. Cavalier, brave cavalier, can you not look up, and muse?”
Hilary, being thus invoked, though he had no idea what was meant—the language being pure Castilian—certainly did look up, and try with very bad success to muse. His eyes met kind Camilla’s first (because she was leaning over him), but in spite of close resemblance, found not what they wanted in them, and wandered on, and met the eyes of Claudia, and rested there.
Camilla, with the speed of love outwinging all the wings of thought, felt, like a stab, this absence from her and this presence elsewhere. And having plenty of inborn pride, as behoved her and became her well, she turned away to go, and leave her sister (who could not pray at all) to pray for what seemed to be more her own. And her heart was bitter, as she turned away.
Claudia (who cared not one half-real for Hilary, or what became of him; and who never prayed for herself, or told her beads, or did any religious thing) was also ready to go, with a mind relieved of a noxious duty; when her softer, and therefore nobler, sister came back, with her small pride conquered.
“It is not a time to dispute,” she said, “nor even to give one’s self to pray, when violent pain is tearing one. My sister, I have prayed for days, and twice as much by night: and yet everything grows much worse, alas! Last night I dreamed a dream of great strangeness. It may have come from my birthday saint. The good Teresina is having her dinner; and she always occupies one large hour in that consummation. Do a thing of courage, sister; you always are so rich in courage.”
“What do you mean?” asked Claudia, smiling; “you seem to have all the courage now.”
“Alas! I have no courage, Claudia. You are laughing at me. But if you would only raise the bandage—I dare not touch the poor cavalier—where the sad inflammation is, that makes him look at you so—it is possible that I could, or perhaps that you could—”
“Could what?” asked Claudia, who was not of a long-enduring temper; “I have no fear to touch him; and he seems to be all bandages. There now, is that what you require?” Camilla shuddered as her sister firmly (as if she were unswathing a mummy of four thousand years) untied Teresina’s knots, and laid bare the angry wound, which was eating Hilary’s life away. Then a livid virulent gash appeared, banked with proud flesh upon either side, and Claudia could not look at it.
But Camilla gathered the courage often latent in true gentleness, and heeded only in her heart how the poor young fellow fell away and fainted from the bold exposure, and falling back, thus made his wound open and gape wider.
“I see it! I see it! I shall save him yet,” she cried, in feminine ecstasy; and while Claudia thought her mad, she snatched from the chain at her zone a little steel implement, often carried by Spanish girls for beauty’s sake. With dainty skimmings, and the lightest touch, she contrived to get this well inside all the mere outward mischief, and drew out a splinter of rusty iron, and held it up to the light in triumph; and then she went down on her knees and sobbed, but still held fast her trophy.