Barnaby looked up, surprised.
Susan must have started, and Lady Henrietta would not open his door so slowly. Who was this rustling on his threshold?
She took a little run into the room, and stopped.
"Oh, Barnaby!" she cried emotionally. "At last—!"
His unresponsiveness was thrown away on her excited mood. Flushed with victory she misread his expression, less like rapture than consternation.
"This is a bit unexpected," he said. "I'm not in very good form, Julia. I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me—"
"Was I too sudden?" she said. "Ah, poor Barnaby; how you are altered;—how ill you look! Let me do something for you—"
She rushed at him with enthusiasm, casting a glance around her for illumination, and he could but smile at her hasty gesture, not yet grasping its full significance, not realizing the jealous self-assertion that lay behind her bewildering readiness to push him back in his chair, to shake up his pillows, to administer some potion.
"I don't want anything, thanks," he said. He was still grappling with the problem of her appearance.
"Oh—" she cried, desisting, "to think of you, helpless all this time, and in the hands of that woman—!"