The two pairs of eyes met in the looking-glass.
‘I cannot make it hold,’ said he. ‘It is not wet enough, and I am too clumsy.’
His arm ached where it had been hit below the elbow; it was difficult to keep it steady.
‘I can do it,’ said Cecilia, a certain resolute neutrality in her voice. ‘Hold the candle, sir.’
She took the strip from him, and, dipping it afresh in the water, laid it deftly across his cheek-bone.
As her cool fingers touched his hot cheek he dropped his eyes from her face to the fine handkerchief which she had tucked into her bosom, and which rose and fell with her breathing. She took it out, and held it pressed against the plaster.
‘You will need two pieces,’ she said. ‘Keep this upon the place while I cut another strip.’
He had never been ordered in this way by a girl before. Caprice he had experience of, and he had known the exactingness of spoilt women, but Cecilia’s impersonal commanding of him was new, and it did not displease him. He told himself, as he stood in front of her, that, were he to describe her, he would never call her a girl. She was essentially a woman.
‘That is a much better arrangement,’ observed Captain Somerville, as Gilbert entered the dining-room alone. ‘I did not know you were such a good surgeon, Speid.’
‘Don’t praise me. I was making such a clumsy job of it that Miss Raeburn came to my help; she has mended it so well that a few days will heal it, I expect.’