“It comes of learning how well I have been nursed,” he answered, making shift to rise, and he laughed inwardly to see the red flush of confusion spread over the milk-white skin, the reproachful shaft her eyes let loose upon Leduc.
She came forward swiftly to check his rising; but he was already on his feet, proud of his return to strength, vain to display it. “Nay,” she reproved him. “If you are so headstrong, I shall leave you.”
“If you do, ma'am. I vow here, as I am, I hope, a gentleman, that I shall go home to-day, and on foot.”
“You would kill yourself,” she told him.
“I might kill myself for less, and yet be justified.”
She looked her despair of him. “What must I do to make you reasonable?”
“Set me the example by being reasonable yourself, and let there be no more of this wild talk of leaving me the very moment you are come. Leduc, a chair for Mistress Winthrop!” he commanded, as though chairs abounded in a garden nook. But Leduc, the diplomat, had effaced himself.
She laughed at his grand air, and, herself, drew forward the stool that had been Leduc's, and sat down. Satisfied, Mr. Caryll made her a bow, and seated himself sideways on his long chair, so that he faced her. She begged that he would dispose himself more comfortably; but he scorned the very notion.
“Unaided I walked here from the house,” he informed her with a boastful air. “I had need to begin to feel my feet again. You are pampering me here, and to pamper an invalid is bad; it keeps him an invalid. Now I am an invalid no longer.”
“But the doctor—” she began.