Meanwhile the governess had, with the assistance of two of the negro attendants, brought Nina into the house. The poor girl continued in the same state of insensibility to all that was passing around; her eyes were open, but she seemed to recognise no one, and a few vague indistinct words still trembled on her lips.
The doctor was instantly summoned, who pronounced, as soon as he had seen his patient, that she was in a dangerous fit, using sundry mysterious expressions about “febrile symptoms,” and “pressure on the brain,” to which the worthy leech added shakings of the head yet more mysterious.
For many days her condition continued alarming; the threatened fever came, and with it a protracted state of delirium. During this period Ethelston’s anxiety and agitation were extreme; and proportionate was the relief that he experienced, when he learnt that the crisis was past, and that the youthful strength of her constitution promised speedy recovery.
Meanwhile he had to endure the oft–repeated inquiries of the governess, “How he happened to find Mademoiselle just as the fit came on?” and of Madame L’Estrange, “How it was possible for Nina to be attacked by so sudden an illness, while walking in the orange–grove?”
When she was at length pronounced out of danger, Ethelston again began to consider various projects for his meditated escape from the island. He had more than once held communication with his faithful Cupid on the subject, who was ready to brave all risks in the service of his master; but the distance which must be traversed before they could expect to find a friendly ship or coast, seemed to exclude all reasonable hope of success.
It would be impossible to follow and portray the thousand changes that came over Nina’s spirit during her recovery. She remembered but too well the words that Ethelston had last spoken: at one moment she called him perfidious, ungrateful, heartless; then she chid herself for railing at him, and loaded his name with every blessing, and the expression of the fondest affection: now she resolved that she would never see nor speak to him more; then she thought that she must see him, if it were only to show how she had conquered her weakness. Amidst all these contending resolutions, she worked herself into the belief that Ethelston had deceived her; and that, because he thought her a child, and did not love her, he had invented the tale of his previous engagement to lessen her mortification. This soon became her settled conviction; and when it crossed her mind, she would start with passion and exclaim, “He shall yet love me, and me alone!”
The only confidant of her love was a young negress, who waited upon her, and who was indeed so devoted to her that she would have braved the Commodore’s utmost wrath, or perilled her life, to execute her mistress’ commands.
It happened one evening that this girl, whose name was Fanchette, went out to gather some fruit in the orange–grove; and while thus employed she heard the voice of some one speaking. On drawing nearer to the spot whence the sound proceeded, she saw Ethelston sitting under the deep shade of a tree, with what appeared a book before him.
Knowing that Nina was still confined to her room, he had resorted hither to consider his schemes without interruption, and was so busily employed in comparing distances, and calculating possibilities, on the map before him, that Fanchette easily crept to a place whence she could, unperceived, overhear and observe him. “I must and will attempt it,” he muttered aloud to himself; “we must steal a boat. Cupid and I can manage it between us; my duty and my love both forbid my staying longer here: with a fishing–boat we might reach Antigua or Dominica, or at all events chance to fall in with an American or a neutral vessel. Poor dear Nina,” he added, in a lower tone. “Would to God I had never visited this shore! this,” he continued, drawing a locket from his breast, “this treasured remembrance of one far distant has made me proof against thy charms, cold to thy love, but not, as Heaven is my witness, unmoved or insensible to thy sufferings.” So saying he relapsed into silent musing; and as he replaced the locket, Fanchette crept noiselessly from her concealment, and ran to communicate to her young mistress her version of what she had seen. Being very imperfectly skilled in English, she put her own construction upon those few words which she had caught, and thought to serve Nina best by telling her what she would most like to hear. Thus she described to her how Ethelston had spoken to himself over a map; how he had mentioned islands to which he would sail; how he had named her name with tenderness, and had taken something from his vest to press it to his lips.