It may have been fatigue, but I thought that she was looking worried.
"You told me this morning," I said, "that a nurse wasn't necessary any more for the present."
"I didn't think so—then, but she's not quite so well to-night. We mustn't talk here, or we shall wake her. You didn't say anything to upset her, did you, David?"
"I hope not. What's been the matter?"
We came into the passage, and George and Bertrand considerately whispered good-night and left us. I would have gone, too, but O'Rane had slipped his arm through mine.
"She's so nervous and fanciful," Lady Loring explained, "that she makes herself quite ill. I suppose, never having been through it before.... To-night she was quite ridiculous. Didn't it sometimes happen in bad cases that the mother or the child had to be sacrificed? Well, what happened then? And who decided? She worked herself up into the most pitiful state, imagining herself unconscious and at the mercy of a mere brutal man, who could order her to be killed." Lady Loring looked through the open door and smiled compassionately. "She's so afraid of dying, David, that it never occurs to her that this sort of thing is happening every hour of the day and that it's the exception for anything to go wrong. I don't quite know what to do about her...."
O'Rane stood for a moment without speaking; then he disengaged his arm and said good-night to us. I heard him busying himself in the library for a few minutes; the front door closed gently, and I caught the sound of footsteps, as he walked away. The next morning he telephoned to ask how his wife was. In the afternoon he called with a cab for his luggage and drove to Waterloo without coming into the house.