The usual nine days of full eruption, following upon forty-eight hours of fever, were gone through, with, of course, abundance of discomfort and restlessness. Despite the comparatively mild nature of his illness, Roy fell away fast in flesh and strength, while Ivor managed with a minimum of repose. If Roy were able to get a short sleep, Denham used that opportunity to do the same himself, but in some mysterious way he always contrived to be awake before Roy woke up. His handsome bronzed face grew less bronzed with the confinement and lack of exercise.
So far as he knew how to guard against the spread of infection, he did his best. No one beside himself and the doctor entered the sick room, except a wizened old Frenchwoman, herself frightful from the effects of the same dire disease, who was hired to come in each morning for half-an-hour, while Ivor went out, that she might put the room into something like order. For the rest, the gallant young Guardsman, sweet Polly's lover, undertook the whole.
Then tokens of improvement began; and Colonel Baron sent a letter home which cheered Molly's sore heart; and, just when all promised well for a quick recovery, violent inflammation of one ear set in. For days and nights the boy suffered tortures, and sleep was impossible for him, therefore for his nurse. Roy, in his weakened state, sometimes broke down and cried bitterly with the pain, imploring Ivor never to let Molly know that he had cried.
"She'd think me so girlish," he said, while tears rolled down his thin cheeks, marked by half-a-dozen red pits. "Please don't ever tell her!"
In the midst of this trouble a most unexpected blow fell upon Ivor, in the shape of a stern official notice, desiring him to consider himself a prisoner of war, and at once to render his parole. Ivor was a calm-mannered man generally, with the composure which means only the determined holding-down of a far from placid nature, but some fierce and angry words broke from him that day. He was compelled to go out to give his parole, infection or no infection, leaving the old woman in charge for as brief a space as might be; and indignant utterances were exchanged between himself and Colonel Baron, whom he chanced to meet, bent on the same errand. Then he had to hasten back to the boy, with a heavy weight at his heart. It meant to Ivor, not only indefinite separation from Polly, but also a complete deadlock in his military career. He was passionately in love with her; he was hardly less passionately in love with his profession. Had imprisonment come in the ordinary way, through reverse or capture in actual warfare, he would have borne it more easily; but the sense of injustice rankled here. Also at once he foresaw the complications likely to arise, and the probability that an exchange of prisoners would be impossible. As he patiently tended the boy, doing all that he could to bring relief, his brain went round at the thought of his position, and that of Colonel Baron.
(To be continued.)
[ABOUT PEGGY SAVILLE.]
By JESSIE MANSERGH (Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey), Author of "A Girl in Springtime," "Sisters Three," etc.