"No; please do not come. There is no comfort for me while my Mollie is ill and suffering;" and Waveney drew her cold hands out of Althea's detaining grasp. It was sad to see how her step had suddenly lost its springiness. To be alone—that was her one thought now, as it is the instinct of all sorely wounded creatures in God's free world.
Waveney never recalled that night of misery without a shudder. The sudden shock quite prostrated her. That Mollie should be ill, perhaps dangerously ill!—for every one knew that people died of diphtheria: Princess Alice had, and the butcher's little daughter, and one or two others that she and Mollie knew—that Mollie should be ill, and that her only sister should not be allowed to nurse her!—this was almost inconceivable to Waveney.
It was this separation that seemed so unnatural, and Waveney chafed bitterly against her father's restrictions. After those first unguarded expressions she did not blame him in words, but again and again in her heart she accused him of cruelty.
"Oh, father, how could you, how could you!" she said over and over again that night. "It is not right, it is not fair, that you should torture me like this. If I were only there I should not be so unnerved and frightened, but everything is worse when one is kept away."
Waveney was right from her own point of view. She would have been her brave, resolute little self at Cleveland Terrace, and Mollie would have had the tenderest and most cheery of nurses.
"I should not have taken it. I should have been careful and left the nurse to do things," she said later on. "It was just father's nervousness."
Dr. Duncan's opinion she treated with contempt. It was part of a doctor's duty to say these things.
More than once Althea crept to the girl's door; but she could hear nothing. Once she turned the handle, but the door was locked. Waveney, who was still sitting huddled up in the easy-chair, heard the soft, retreating footsteps go down the passage again. Her fire had burnt out, and she felt strangely chilled. "I may as well go to bed," she thought, drearily; but it was long before the deadly cold left her limbs. Even when she slept, her dreams troubled her, and she woke the next morning to see Althea standing beside her bed with a cup of hot coffee in one hand, and in her other a yellow envelope.
"Will you drink this, my dear? Doreen and I have had our breakfast, but there is no need for you to hurry. If you lie still Nurse Marks will bring you yours."
"Oh, no, I could not think of such a thing," returned Waveney, quite shocked. "I am not ill. I would rather get up, please. I am so sorry I have overslept myself; but I was late, and——" Then she looked at the telegram wistfully. "Is that for me, Miss Harford?"