The concierge of the Hotel Victoria took my bag and pointed me out to a diminutive young lady who was standing near. She at once came forward and held out her hand, whilst a winning smile spread over her pleasant face.
"You are Miss Holden, are you not? I have stepped across to meet you, so that you might not feel so strange on your arrival. My husband is a doctor—Dr. Grey—and he has taken an interest in Mr. Evans, and continues to do so even though I have fallen in love with the old gentleman."
I liked the girl straight away. She is quite young—only just twenty-three, as she told me frankly, and ever such a little creature, though she carries herself with the dignity of a duchess—in fact, with much more dignity than some duchesses I have seen.
"Now that is 'real good' of you, as the Americans whose company I have just left would say," I replied; "and I think it was very nice of you to think of it. Tell me first, please, if Mr. Evans is worse."
"I really cannot say with certainty," she replied; "the Zermatt doctor thinks he is not going to recover, and my husband says that he will live for months. Now my husband, dear, is a very clever man indeed, though he is only young; and although the other man looks very formidable and wears spectacles I don't believe he is as clever as Ralph."
I smiled. "You have known the one doctor longer than the other," I said.
"Not much, as a doctor," she confided. "To let you into a secret which nobody here has discovered, Ralph and I are on our honeymoon, so that my experience of his medical abilities is limited, but I am sure he is very clever. But come! the hotel is only just across the way."
She accompanied me to my room and chatted incessantly whilst I was endeavouring to remove the grime and grit which the continental engines deposit so generously upon the traveller behind them.
"There!" she said, as I emptied the water for the third time, and sponged my face and neck preparatory to a brisk towelling; "you have emerged at last. But you will never be quite yourself until you have washed your hair. Do it to-night, dear. I know a splendid way of tying your head up in a towel so that you can sleep quite comfy."
The squire's face brightened when he saw me. He was sitting near the window in a great easy-chair which was almost a couch, and his hair was whiter than when he left England, and his face was—oh! so thin and grey; but what a gentleman he looked! He held out both hands, but I bent over and kissed him. If it was a bold thing to do I don't mind. My Inner Self bade me do it and I obeyed.