But here the old doctor, who had been stealthily moving about the room, interfered, and produced a biscuit-box and a decanter of port wine and a glass; while the old lady begged Miss Ross to take off her cloak and remain with them a little while. At this moment Mangan came out from the sick-room.
"Doctor," said he in a whisper, "you must go in presently; I think you'll see a difference. He is quite pleased and content—talking to himself a little, but not complaining any more. Twice he has said, 'Maurice, Nina has spoken at last.'"
There was a tinkle of a bell; Maurice answered it with the swiftness of a nurse in a hospital. He returned in a minute, looking a little puzzled.
"He wants to make quite sure you have been here," he said to Nina, in the same undertone; "and I told him you were in the next room, but that you were tired, and could not see him just now. No, I don't think it would do for you to go back at present—what do you say, doctor?—he seems so much more tranquil, and it would be a pity to run any risk. But if you could just let him know you were here—he might hear your talking to us—that would be no harm—"
"She threw herself on her knees by the bedside and seized his hand."
"I know how to tell Leo that I am here," Nina said, simply; and she went to the piano and opened it. Then, with the most exquisite softness, she began to play some familiar Neapolitan airs—slowly and gently, so that they must have sounded in the sick-chamber like mere echoes of song coming from across wide waters. And would he not understand that it was Nina who was speaking to him; that she was only a few yards from him; and not the ghostly Nina who had so often come to the sick-room door and remained there strangely silent, but the wilful, gentle, capricious, warm-hearted cianciosella who had