"You were in no condition to hear news of importance."
"Is that why you have been so silent?"
"Hush! You have talked quite enough for the present."
"You act strangely—differently," he insisted.
"I am your nurse. I am responsible for your recovery, so I do as I am ordered."
"And you haven't changed?" he inquired, wistfully.
"Not at all, I am quite the same—quite the same girl you knew in Sicily!" He did not relish her undertone, and wondered if illness had quickened his imagination, if he was forever seeing more in her manner, hearing more in her words than she meant. There was something intangibly cold and distant about her, or seemed to be. During the first feverish hours after his return to consciousness he had seen her hanging over him with a wonderful loving tenderness—it was that which had closed his wounds and brought him back toward health so swiftly; but as his brain had cleared and he had grown more rational this vision had disappeared along with his other fancies.
He wondered whether knowledge of his pseudo-engagement to Myra Nell had anything to do with her manner. He knew that she was in the girl's confidence. Naturally, he himself was not quite at his ease in regard to Miss Warren. The rumor about his advancing the money for her Carnival expenses had been quieted through Bernie's efforts, and the knowledge of it restricted to a necessary few. Although Myra Nell had refused his offers of marriage and treated the matter lightly, he could not help feeling that this attitude was assumed or exaggerated to cover her humiliation—or was it something deeper? It would be terrible if she really cared for him in earnest. Her own character protected her from scandal. The breaking-off of his supposed engagement with her could not hurt her—unless she really loved him. He closed his eyes, cursing Bernie inwardly. After a time he again addressed Vittoria.
"Tell me," he said, "how Maruffi came to spare you. My last vision was of him aiming—"
"He had but four shots."