“No more there is, happily. Well, I shall be thankful if her devotion to Anstruther lasts long enough to keep her between walls just now. Bahram Khan driven desperate would be an ugly customer to meet out in the open.”
It was a source of considerable relief to Dick to learn that at this particular time Mabel was less likely than ever to quit her charge. Two or three days before, she had astonished Dr Tighe by demanding to be allowed to assist in dressing the patient’s burns. The doctor, who had contrived, with what he regarded as almost superhuman cunning, always to accomplish this process at a time when she was not on duty, was much perplexed by the request.
“Trust me,” he urged; “I’ll let you help as soon as it’s desirable.”
Mabel shook her head. “You don’t understand,” she said. “I want to know the worst while he is still unconscious. I think I can trust myself not to make any sign, but I am not sure, and if it is very dreadful—oh, it would break my heart if he thought I shrank from him because of his scars!”
“But, my dear young lady, that’s all the more reason for waiting. The wounds will be far less painful to look at when they are a little more healed.”
“That’s just it. If I see them now, at their worst, I can’t be horrified afterwards. I want to be able to judge of the improvement, so that I may cheer him if he thinks he is not getting on.”
Dr Tighe muttered fiercely to himself, but yielded at last, and allowed Mabel to act as his assistant at the next dressing. She thought she had schooled herself to bear the worst, but in spite of all her resolutions she shrank and shivered involuntarily when she realised the frightful change in the dark handsome face she had always secretly admired. Dr Tighe, going about his work with swift, practised fingers, said nothing, and pretended not to notice the drops of water which splashed upon him from the basin she held.
“Will he—can he ever look at all as he did?” she asked in a whisper at last.
“If things turn out as I hope, he will look no worse than a man who is badly marked with smallpox. There will be two or three ugly seams—here, and here”—he indicated the precise spots lightly with a finger-tip—“but the hair will help to cover them when it grows again, and if the mouth is much disfigured—why, you must lay your commands upon the patient to grow a beard.”
Mabel was crying. “Oh, it is too dreadful, too dreadful!” she sobbed.