For from the first I had been told the trials I was to confront. My life had been saved, although it was at first despaired of, but I must be permanently lame. It had been a most unlucky fall for me, but a glorious case for the surgeons—fractures and compound fractures, broken ribs and dislocated shoulders. In old times, when I had planned out my future, I had said that I would be a surgeon when I grew up; but now, although all my doctors—and my experience of doctors had come to be as wide as most people's—had been most patient, tender and untiring in their study and treatment of my case, I resigned without one murmur my wish to enter the profession.
One morning, while I was still absolutely helpless, a fierce gleam of light reflected up from the sea shot athwart my face. Helen sprang up and carefully adjusted shades and curtains.
"You are a kind little nurse, Helen," said I. "What does the new governess think of the way you spend your time?"
"Oh, Mademoiselle Lenoir quite enjoys it," returned my mother, laughing: "she sits about reading novels and eating bonbons. I will go and see what she is doing now."
"Do, mother," said I, "and take a walk in the greenhouses yourself.—Helen, you'll take good care of me, won't you?"
She flung her arm about my neck and pressed her quivering lips against my hair.
"I wish I could do something for you," she cried plaintively.
"But you do a great deal, Helen. Of course my mother does everything best of any one, but you come next."
She gave me a piteous little smile. "I wish I could do something better than any one else," she whispered: "it was all my fault."
"Now, dear little girl, I shall send you away if you say that any more. Nothing was your fault—nothing. Don't take up that weary strain again. I want you to tell me all about that morning, though: I never heard yet how you came to be on the cliff at all. Your grandfather had forbidden you to go there."