‘No doubt, sister,’ said Angelica, undoing bolt and bar; ‘but you know our charge, and the enemy is watchful to surprise us—INCEDIT SICUT LEO VORANS, saith the breviary. Whom have you brought here? Oh, sister, what have you done?’
‘It is a young man,’ said Seraphina, hastening to interrupt her sister’s remonstrance, ‘a relation, I believe, of our worthy Father Fairford; left at the gate by the captain of that blessed vessel the SAINTE GENEVIEVE—almost dead—and charged with dispatches to ‘—
She lowered her voice as she mumbled over the last words.
‘Nay, then, there is no help,’ said Angelica; ‘but it is unlucky.’
During this dialogue between the vestals of Fairladies, Dick Gardener deposited his burden in a chair, where the young lady, after a moment of hesitation, expressing a becoming reluctance to touch the hand of a stranger, put her finger and thumb upon Fairford’s wrist, and counted his pulse.
‘There is fever here, sister,’ she said; ‘Richard must call Ambrose, and we must send some of the febrifuge.’
Ambrose arrived presently, a plausible and respectable-looking old servant, bred in the family, and who had risen from rank to rank in the Arthuret service till he was become half-physician, half-almoner, half-butler, and entire governor; that is, when the Father Confessor, who frequently eased him of the toils of government, chanced to be abroad. Under the direction, and with the assistance of this venerable personage, the unlucky Alan Fairford was conveyed to a decent apartment at the end of a long gallery, and, to his inexpressible relief, consigned to a comfortable bed. He did not attempt to resist the prescription of Mr. Ambrose, who not only presented him with the proposed draught, but proceeded so far as to take a considerable quantity of blood from him, by which last operation he probably did his patient much service.