With a muttered apology, Caerleon hurried past her, and hastened up-stairs to Cyril’s room, meeting the doctor on the way, and hearing the unfavourable verdict confirmed. The patient’s state was critical, and the remedies which had been applied seemed to have failed of their effect. Everything depended now on constant care and attention, and this the Princess and her household might be relied upon to furnish. But such a transference of responsibility could not satisfy Caerleon. He insisted on taking his share, and much more than his share, of the nursing, and would never have quitted his brother’s room if he had not been compelled to do so. The Princess and the doctor between them hunted him out for a walk twice a-day, and obliged him to take his meals in an adjoining room, but except during these short intervals he insisted on remaining with Cyril. The telegram which reached him from M. Drakovics, inquiring anxiously what course he intended to pursue with regard to Thracia, and that from King Otto Georg, offering to resign the kingdom to him at once, were read and answered by the patient’s bedside, and forgotten as soon as they had been disposed of, in the all-absorbing interest of the struggle between life and death. The Princess was surprised and touched by the devotion of the elder brother to the younger, but Nadia read Caerleon’s feelings more clearly. He was indignant with himself for acquiescing so easily in the cheerful view at first taken of Cyril’s state, and for allowing his mind to turn to considerations respecting his own love and happiness when the brother who had come to Thracia for his sake, who had done his best to keep him on his unstable throne, and who was suffering even now through his misfortune, was too much prostrated by pain and weakness even to realise the gravity of his own condition. To devote himself now altogether to Cyril, and to atone for his past neglect by cutting himself off almost entirely from Nadia’s society, was his first impulse, but Nadia only admired him the more on this very account, for in a similar case her own instinct would have been to do exactly the same. As it was, she stifled a sigh over the memories of that first evening and morning, when Caerleon had seemed so happy and had talked so cheerfully as to recall the first days of her acquaintance with him, and turned heroically to taking her share of the nursing, or to doing what she could towards leaving her godmother free to devote herself to the invalid.
“What an ungrateful wretch I am!” she said to herself. “A week ago it would have seemed to me the very height of happiness merely to know that Carlino was alive, and yet now that he is in the same house, and I see him every day, I am not content. Can it be that I am jealous of poor Lord Cyril? It sounds dreadful, and yet, when I see that Carlino is always thinking about him, and never speaks to me unless he is obliged, it makes me miserable. And I ought to be glad to be able to do anything for Lord Cyril, and so I am,—only I am glad that I forgave him before I knew how hard it would be.”
Another thing that made the time she spent in nursing Cyril more than ordinarily hard for Nadia was the fact that her presence always seemed to exert on the patient an influence the reverse of soothing. Whether it was that her anxious, painstaking ways irritated him, or that his conscience pricked him with regard to her, did not appear, but his fevered eyes followed her persistently about the room, and seemed to be addressing some entreaty to her. The doctor noticed it at last.
“He has something on his mind,” he said to Caerleon. “Has anything occurred to trouble him, do you know?”
“Nothing but our leaving Thracia, so far as I am aware.”
“He did not leave any young lady behind him there, of whom Miss O’Malachy may remind him, did he?”
“Oh no. He’s not that sort of fellow at all,” responded Caerleon, with absolute assurance. But no other suggestion presented itself to his mind, and he found himself puzzling continually over the uneasiness Cyril showed in Nadia’s presence. Could it be that for some reason she was vaguely connected in his mind with her brother? Nadia herself could offer no explanation but this, and the discovery of the real cause of Cyril’s aversion to her surprised her almost as much as it did Caerleon. She was left in charge of the patient one day, while Caerleon ate his lunch in the dressing-room, and he was astonished after a time to hear the sounds of an altercation from the sick-room,—if that could be called an altercation in which all the speaking was on one side.
“Is he delirious?” he asked, opening the door slightly. “Can I help you?”
“Oh, do go away,” said Nadia, her face flushed and angry. “No, it’s too late; he has heard your voice. I think he must be delirious.”
“But what is it? Does he want anything?”