“‘Kind.’... The word is feeble, my dear Hector, to express her unbounded goodness,” declared Miss Smithwick. “I can but say that in the midst of sickness, and dire poverty, and other distresses that I will not further dwell on, she came upon me like an Angel from the Heaven in which I firmly believe. And when I lay down my head, never to lift it up again—and I think, my dear, the time is not far off now!—that great and solemn hour that comes to all of us will be cheered and lightened, Hector, if she stands beside my pillow and holds my dying hand.”
The simple sincerity of the utterance brought tears into the listener’s eyes. He winked them back, and said:
“I pray the day you speak of may not dawn for years! My leave, procured with difficulty owing to threatening national disturbances which the Army may be employed in quelling, extends not beyond three days. I shall hope to see this lady, and thank her for her goodness to my friend before I go.”
“I trust she will permit it. She is very reticent—almost shrinking—in her desire to avoid recognition of her....”
Miss Smithwick broke off in the middle of her sentence. She leaned back upon her pillows, lividly pale, breathing hurriedly; her blue lips strove to say: “It is nothing. Don’t mind!”
Alarmed for her, repentant for having forgotten the nurse’s warning, Dunoisse grasped at the bell-rope by the fireplace, and sent an urgent summons clanging through the lower regions of the tall house. Within a moment, as it seemed, the door opened, admitting the capped, and caped, and aproned young woman who had been reading to the patient upon his arrival. A glance seemed to show her a condition of things not unexpected. She went swiftly to the bedside, answering, as Dunoisse turned to her appealingly, the words shaping themselves upon his lips that asked her: “Shall I go?”
“It will be best!... Wait at the end of the passage, near the window on the landing.... This looks alarming,” she answered—“but it will not last long.”
XVII
She had forgotten him before the still pure air of the sick-room had ceased to vibrate with her spoken words. She saw nothing but the patient in need of her, and had passed her arm beneath the pillow and was raising the gray head, and had reached a little vial and a measuring-glass from a stand that was beside the bed, before Dunoisse had gained the door. It might have been five minutes later, as he contemplated a vista of grimy, leaded roofs, and cowled, smoke-vomiting chimney-pots, from the staircase-window at the passage-end, that he heard a light rustling of garments passing over the thick soft carpets, and she came to him, moving with the upright graceful carriage and the long, gliding step that had reminded him of the gait of the tall supple Arab women, whose slender, perfect proportions lend their movements such rhythmic grace. He said to her eagerly, as she stopped at a few paces from him:
“Mademoiselle, you see one who is gravely to blame for forgetfulness of your wise warning. I beg you, hide nothing from me!... Is my dear old friend in danger? Her color was that of Death itself.”