His voice is stronger than it was on Monday; and Lavinia realizes that Nature has been more potent than even Féodorovna; and that he has made a perceptible step towards recovery since their last meeting.
“Are you sure that you are up to seeing me?”
“As sure as that I see you.”
Miss Prince and the nurse have retired together, but obviously at variance, towards the window, and no ear but that to which it is addressed catches the answer. For Lavinia only is the impression of the inestimable benefit conceived to be conferred by the sight of her. From one but lately lying at the point of death insincerities and conventions are apt to flee away, and she knows that straight from that heart, whose beats the bullet had so nearly stilled, rushes the response to her question.
“Come, come!” says Féodorovna, swishing up to the bedside, and speaking in that hybrid whisper with Miss Prince’s own trade-mark, warranted to en-fever the calmest invalid; “you must not hang over him. There is nothing so fatal as to exhaust the air in the immediate neighbourhood of a patient. Sit quietly down here, and do not say too much.”
The precept is easy to obey, and, in fact, compliance with an opposite one would to Miss Carew, for the first moment, be quite impossible. For those first moments the forbidden conversation is supplied by the prohibitor.
“We need not keep you, nurse,” she says, with more of command and less of grovelling deference than the official in question is accustomed to hear. “Your tea is waiting for you.”
Nurse Blandy’s answer is to take the pillows which Féodorovna is beginning, with amateurish wrong-ness, to shake up, out of that ministering angel’s hand, and with two masterly movements adapt them to the patient’s back.
“Miss Carew will ring for me before she leaves you,” she says in a restful, determined voice, and so quietly departs, with one parting glance at her foe, which explains, with telegraphic brevity and distinctness, that no attention to Miss Prince’s orders, but simply a desire for her own refreshment, takes her away.
“I shall stay as watch-dog, to ensure your not being imprudent!” says Féodorovna, emerging triumphant, and with a false sense of victory, out of the late contest, and seating herself nearer to and in much better view of the sick man than she had allowed his visitor to do.