And thus it came about that Marianne Challis was taking a cup of black coffee and a biscuit, but nothing else, thank you, in the house she had refused to follow her husband to over a year ago, at the very moment that his second return of consciousness prompted him to ask again for Polly Anne.
Judith, barely pausing to see that Marianne was "shown in" to the side-room—because it is not enough to know which door; you have to be properly shown in by a servant—had gone quickly to the patient's room, meeting the nurse by the way. She stopped her.
"Is Sir Alfred Challis conscious?"
"I think a little more so. He hasn't spoken, but he evidently wants that bandage off his head. I thought it might be better to mention it before taking it off. Not that I'm really afraid of the responsibility. Only it's as well to be on the safe side. Is Lady Arkroyd downstairs?"
"I think she's just coming up. Sir Alfred's wife is here."
"Oh, indeed. I hope she won't upset him. I shall find Lady Arkroyd downstairs.... Oh, by-the-bye, Miss Arkroyd, what did your mother say was the name of the big parson—Reverend what?"
"Reverend Athelstan Taylor."
"I thought so." And the nurse, a well-defined and explicit person, went downstairs as Judith passed on along the lobby.
The figure on the bed was moving slightly as she entered the room, feeling how venturesome her conduct was; and was evidently fidgeting, as the nurse had said, about the bandage. She went up and stood beside him, hiding a kind of desperation under an immovable exterior. Should she speak to him by name? If so, by what name? As his memory was playing such tricks, might not his present style and title be strange to him? Besides, she had never called him "Sir Alfred." And if she called him "Scroop," as she had done almost throughout, and still he did not recognize her, how then? But surely he was speaking again!