Two days later, Nell sat beside Falconer. He was asleep, but every now
and then he moved suddenly, and his brows knit as if he were suffering.
The great surgeon--who, by the way, was small and short of stature--had
come down, made his examination, said a few cheerful words to the
patient, gone up to the Hall to dinner--at which he had talked fluently
of everything but the case--and returned to London with a big check from
Drake. But though he did not appear to have accomplished anything beyond
a general expression of approval of everything the local man had done,
all persons concerned felt encouraged and more hopeful by his visit; and
when Falconer showed signs of improvement it was duly placed to Sir
William's credit. There is much magic in a great name.
But the improvement was very slight, and Nell, as she watched the
wounded man, often felt a pang of dread shoot through her. Sometimes she
was assailed by the idea that Falconer was not particularly anxious to
live. When he was awake he would lie quite still, save when a spasm of
pain visited him, with his dark eyes fixed dreamily upon the window;
though when she spoke to him he invariably turned them to her with a
world of gratitude, a wealth of devotion in them.
And for the last two days the pity in Nell's tender heart had grown so
intense that it had become own brother to love itself. When a woman
knows that she can make a good man happy by just whispering "I love
you," she is sorely tempted to utter the three little pregnant words,
especially when she herself knows what it is to long for love.
She could make this man who worshiped her happy, and--and was it not
possible in doing so she might find, if not happiness, contentment for
herself?
A hundred times during the last two days she had asked herself this
question, until she had grown to desire that the answer might be in the
affirmative. Perhaps if she were betrothed to Falconer she would learn
to forget Drake, for whose voice and footstep she was always waiting.
On this afternoon, as she sat at her post, she was dwelling on the
problem, which had become almost unendurable at last, and she sighed
wearily.
Falconer awoke, as if he had heard her, and turned his eyes upon her
with the slow yet intense regard of the very weak.
"Are you there still?" he asked, in a low voice. "I thought you promised
me that, if I went to sleep, you would go out, into the garden, at
least."