“I am at my dreams again!” he complained in a whisper.
At his bedside stood a woman, young and comely in the grey homespun, with the white bands and bib and coif that made up the garb of Puritans. Her face was small and pale and oval, her eyes were long, of a colour between blue and green, very wistful now in their expression, and from under the wings of her coif escaped one or two heavy chestnut curls, to lie upon her white neck. A fine cool hand sought his own where it lay upon the coverlet, a voice that was full of soft, sad music answered him.
“Nay, Randal. You are awake at last—thank God!”
And now he saw that those long wistful eyes were aswim in tears.
“Where am I, then?” he asked, in his first real bewilderment since awakening. Almost he began to imagine that he must have dreamt all those things which he had deemed actual memories of a time that had preceded his delirium.
“In the pest-house in Bunhill Fields,” she told him, which only served to increase the confusion in his mind.
“That is ... I can understand that. I have the plague, I know. I remember being stricken with it. But you? How come you here ... in a pest-house?”
“There was nowhere else for me to go, after ... after I left that house in Knight Ryder Street.” And very briefly she explained the circumstances. “So Dr. Beamish brought me here. And here I have been by the blessing of Providence,” she ended, “tending the poor victims of the plague.”
“And you tended me? You?” Incredulous amazement lent strength to his enfeebled voice.
“Did not you tend me?” she answered him.