Roger had assured his cousin that he meant to return home, and
indeed, after Nora’s departure, he spent a fortnight in the country.
But finding he had no patience left for solitude, he again came to
town and established himself for the winter. A restless need of
getting rid of time caused him to resume his earlier social habits.
It began to be said of him that now he had disposed of that queer
little girl that he had picked up Heaven knew where (whom it was
certainly very good-natured of Mrs. Keith to take off his hands), he
was going to look about him for a young person whom he might take to
his home in earnest. Roger felt as if he were now establishing
himself in society in behalf of that larger personality into which
his narrow singleness was destined to expand. He was paving the way
for Nora. It seemed to him that she might find it an easy way to
tread. He compared her attentively with every young girl he met;
many were prettier, some possessed in larger degree the air of
“brightness”; but none revealed that deep-shrined natural force,
lurking in the shadow of modesty like a statue in a recess, which you
hardly know whether to denominate humility or pride.
One evening, at a large party, Roger found himself approached by an
elderly lady who had known him from his boyhood and for whom he had a
traditional regard, but with whom of late years he had relaxed his
intercourse, from a feeling that, being a very worldly old woman, her
influence on Nora might be pernicious. She had never smiled on the
episode of which Nora was the heroine, and she hailed Roger’s
reappearance as a sign that this episode was at an end and that he
had repented of his abrupt eccentricity. She was somewhat cynical in
her shrewdness, and, so far as she might, she handled matters without
gloves.
“I am glad to see you have found your wits again,” she said, “and
that that forlorn little orphan—Dora, Flora, what’s her name?—has
not altogether made a fool of you. You want to marry; come, don’t
deny it. You can no more remain unmarried than I can remain standing
here. Go ask that little man for his chair. With your means and
your disposition and all the rest of it, you ought by this time to be
setting a good example. But it’s never too late to mend. I have got
the thing for you. Have you been introduced to Miss Sands? Who is
Miss Sands? There you are to the life! Miss Sands is Miss Sands,
the young lady in whose honor we are here convened. She is staying
with my sister. You must have heard of her. New York, but good New
York; so pretty that she might be as silly as you please, yet as
clever and good as if she were as plain as I. She is everything a
man can want. If you have not seen her it’s providential. Come;
don’t protest for the sake of protesting. I have thought it all out.
Allow me! in this matter I am a woman of genius. I know at a glance
what will do and what won’t. You are made for each other. Come and
be presented. You have just time to settle down to it before supper.”
Then came into Roger’s honest visage a sort of Mephistophelian
glee,—the momentary intoxication of duplicity. “Well, well,” he
said, “let us see all that’s to be seen.” And he thought of his
Peruvian Teresa. Miss Sands, however, proved no Teresa, and Roger’s
friend had not overstated her merits. Her beauty was remarkable; and
strangely, in spite of her blooming maturity, something in her
expression, her smile, reminded him forcibly of Nora. So Nora might
look after ten or twelve years of evening parties. There was a hint,
just a hint, of customary triumph in the poise of her head, an air of
serene success in her carriage; but it was her especial charm that
she seemed to melt downward and condescend from this altitude of
loveliness with a benignant and considerate grace; to drop, as it
were, from the zenith of her favor, with a little shake of
invitation, the silken cable of a gradual smile. Roger felt that
there was so little to be feared from her that he actually enjoyed
the mere surface-glow of his admiration; the sense of floating
unmelted in the genial zone of her presence, like a polar ice-block
in a summer sea. The more he observed her, the more she seemed to
foreshadow his prospective Nora; so that at last, borrowing
confidence from this phantasmal identity, he addressed her with
unaffected friendliness. Miss Sands, who was a woman of perceptions,
seeing an obviously modest man swimming, as it were, in this mystical
calm, became interested. She divined in Roger’s manner an unusual
species of admiration. She had feasted her fill on uttered flattery;
but here was a good man whose appreciation left compliments far
behind. At the end of ten minutes Roger mentioned that she reminded
him singularly of a young girl he knew. “A young girl, forsooth,”
thought Miss Sands. “Is he coming to his _fadaises_, like the rest
of them?”
“You are older than she,” Roger added, “but I expect her to look like
you some time hence.”
“I gladly bequeath her my youth, as I come to give it up.”
“You can never have been plain,” said Roger. “My friend, just now,
is no beauty. But I assure you, you encourage me.”
“Tell me about this young lady,” his companion rejoined. “It is
interesting to hear about people one looks like.”
“I should like to tell you,” said Roger, “but you would laugh at me.”
“You do me injustice. Evidently this is a matter of sentiment.
Genuine sentiment is the best thing in the world; and when I catch
myself laughing at a mortal who confesses to it, I submit to being
told that I have grown old only to grow silly.”
Roger smiled approval. “I can only say,” he answered, “that this
young friend of mine is, to me, the most interesting object in the
world.”
“In other words, you are engaged to marry her.”
“Not a bit of it.”
“Why, then, she is a deaf-mute whom you have rendered vocal, or a
pretty heathen whom you have brought to Sunday school.”
Roger laughed exuberantly. “You have hit it,” he said: “a deaf-mute
whom I have taught to speak. Add to that, that she was a little
blind, and that now she recognizes me with spectacles, and you will
admit that I have reason to be proud of my work.” Then, after a
pause he pursued, seriously, “If anything were to happen to her—”
“If she were to lose her faculties—”
“I should be in despair. But I know what I should do. I should come
to you.”
“O, I should be a poor substitute!”
“I should make love to you,” Roger went on.
“You would be in despair indeed. But you must bring me some supper.”
Half an hour later, as the ladies were cloaking themselves, Mrs.
Middleton, who had undertaken Roger’s case, asked Miss Sands for her
impressions. These seemed to have been highly propitious. “He is
not a shining light, perhaps,” the young lady said, “but he is an
honest man. He is in earnest; after what I have been through, that
is very pleasant. And by the way, what is this little deaf and dumb
girl in whom he is interested?”
Mrs. Middleton stared. “I never heard she was deaf and dumb. Very
likely. He adopted her and brought her up. He has sent her
abroad—to learn the languages!”
Miss Sands mused as they descended the stairs. “He is a good man,”
she said. “I like him.”
It was in consequence, doubtless, of this last remark that Roger, the
next morning, received a note from his friend. “You have made a hit;
I shall never forgive you, if you don’t follow it up. You have only
to be decently civil and then propose. Come and dine with me on
Wednesday. I shall have only one guest. You know I always take a
nap after dinner.”
The same post that brought Mrs. Middleton’s note brought a letter
from Nora. It was dated from Rome, and ran as follows:—
“I hardly know, dearest Roger, whether to begin with an apology or a
scolding. We have each something to forgive, but you have certainly
least. I have before me your two poor little notes, which I have
been reading over for the twentieth time; trying, in this city of
miracles, to work upon them the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
But the miracle won’t come; they remain only two very much bethumbed
epistles. Dear Roger, I have been extremely vexed and uneasy. I
have fancied you were ill, or, worse,—that out of sight is out of
mind. It is not with me, I assure you. I have written you _twelve_
little letters. They have been short only because I have been
horribly busy. To-day I declined an invitation to drive on the
Campagna, on purpose to write to you. The Campagna,—do you hear? I
can hardly believe that, five months ago, I was watching the ripe
apples drop in the orchard at C——. We are always on our second
floor on the Pincian, with plenty of sun, which you know is the great
necessity here. Close at hand are the great steps of the Piazza di
Spagna, where the beggars and models sit at the receipt of custom.
Some of them are so handsome, sunning themselves there in their
picturesqueness, that I cannot help wishing I knew how to paint or
draw. I wish I had been a good girl three years ago and done as you
wished, and taken drawing-lessons in earnest. Dear Roger, I never
neglected your advice but to my cost. Mrs. Keith is extremely kind,
and determined I shall have not come abroad to ‘mope,’ as she says.
She does not care much for sight-seeing, having done it all before;
though she keeps pretty well _au courant_ of the various church
festivals. She very often talks of you, and is very fond of you.
She is full of good points, but that is her best one. My own
sight-seeing habits do not at all incommode her, owing to my having
made the acquaintance of a little old German lady who lives at the
top of our house. She is a queer wizened oddity of a woman, but she
is very clever and friendly, and she has the things of Rome on her
fingers’ ends. The reason of her being here is very sad and
beautiful. Twelve years ago her younger sister, a beautiful girl
(she has shown me her miniature), was deceived and abandoned by her
betrothed. She fled away from her home, and after many weary
wanderings found her way to Rome, and gained admission to the convent
with the dreadful name,—the Sepolte Vive. Here, ever since, she has
been immured. The inmates are literally buried alive; they are dead
to the outer world. My poor little Mademoiselle Stamm followed her
and took up her dwelling here, to be near her. But they have a dead
stone wall between them. For twelve years she has never seen her.
Her only communication with Lisa—her conventual name she doesn’t
even know—is once a week to deposit a bouquet of flowers, with her
name attached, in the little blind wicket of the convent wall. To do
this with her own hands, she lives in Rome. She composes her bouquet
with a kind of passion; I have seen her and helped her. Fortunately
flowers in Rome are very cheap, for my friend is deplorably poor. I
have had a little pleasure, or rather a great pleasure. For the past
two months I have furnished the flowers, and I assure you we have had
the best. I go each time with Mademoiselle Stamm to the wicket, and
we put in our bouquet and see it gobbled up into the speechless maw
of the cloister. It is a dismal amusement, but I confess it
interests me. I feel as if I knew this poor Lisa; though, after all,
she may be dead, and we may be worshipping a shadow. But in this
city of shadows and memories, what is one shadow the more? Don’t
think, however, that we spend all our time in playing with shadows.
We go everywhere, we see everything; I could not be in better hands.
Mrs. Keith has doubts about my friend’s moral influence; she accuses
her of being a German philosopher in petticoats. She is a German,
she wears petticoats; and having known poverty and unhappiness, she
is obliged to be something of a philosopher. As for her metaphysics,
they may be very wicked, but I should be too stupid to understand
them, and it is less trouble to abide by my own—and Mrs. Keith’s!
At all events, I have told her all about you, and she says you are
the one good man she ever heard of; so it’s not for you to
disapprove of her! My mornings I spend with her; after lunch I go
out with Mrs. Keith. We drive to the various villas, make visits
upon all kinds of people, go to studios and churches and palaces. In
the evenings we hold high revel. Mrs. Keith knows every one; she
receives a great many people, and we go out in proportion. It is a
most amusing world. I have seen more people in the last six weeks
than I ever expected to in a lifetime. I feel so old,—you wouldn’t
know me! One grows more in a month in this wonderful Rome than in a
year at home. Mrs. Keith is very much liked and admired. She has
lightened her mourning and looks much better; but, as she says, she
will never be herself till she gets back to pink. As for me, I wear
pink and blue and every color of the rainbow. It appears that
everything suits me; there is no spoiling me. Of course, I am
_out_,—a thousand miles out. I came out six weeks ago at the great
ball of the Princess X. How the Princess X.—poor lady!—came to
serve my turn, is more than I can say; but Mrs. Keith is a fairy
godmother; she shod me in glass slippers and we went. I fortunately
came home with my slippers on my feet. I was very much frightened
when we went in. I courtesied to the Princess: and the Princess
stared good-naturedly; while I heard Mrs. Keith behind me whispering,
‘Lower, lower!’ But I have yet to learn how to courtesy to
condescending princesses. Now I can drop a little bow to a good old
cardinal as smartly as you please. Mrs. Keith has presented me to
half a dozen, with whom I pass, I suppose, for an interesting
convert. Alas, I am only a convert to worldly vanities, which I
confess I vastly enjoy. Dear Roger, I am hopelessly frivolous. The
shrinking diffidence of childhood I have utterly cast away. I speak
up at people as bold as brass. I like having them introduced to me,
and having to be interested and interesting at a moment’s notice. I
like listening and watching; I like sitting up to the small hours; I
like talking myself. But I need hardly to tell you this, at the end
of my ten pages of chatter. I have talked about my own affairs,
because I know they will interest you. Profit by my good example,
and tell me all about yours. Do you miss me? I have read over and
over your two little notes, to find some little hint that you do; but
not a word! I confess I wouldn’t have you too unhappy. I am so glad
to hear you are in town, and not at that dreary, wintry C——. Is
our old C—— life at an end, I wonder? Nothing can ever be the same
after a winter in Rome. Sometimes I am half frightened at having had
it in my youth. It leaves such a chance to be dull afterwards! But
I shall come back some day with you. And not even the Princess X.
shall make me forget my winter seat by the library fire at C——, my
summer seat under the great elm.”
This production seemed to Roger a marvel of intellectual promise and
epistolary grace; it filled his eyes with grateful tears; he carried
it in his pocket-book and read it to a dozen people. His tears,
however, were partly those of penitence, as well as of delight. He
had had a purpose in preserving that silence, which had cost so much
to his good-nature. He wished to make Nora miss him, and to let
silence combine with absence to plead for him. Had he succeeded?
Not too well, it would seem; yet well enough to make him feel that he
had been cruel. His letter occupied him so intensely that it was not
till within an hour of Mrs. Middleton’s dinner that he remembered his
engagement. In the drawing-room he found Miss Sands, looking even
more beautiful in a dark high-necked dress than in the glory of gauze
and flowers. During dinner he was in excellent spirits; he uttered
perhaps no epigrams, but he gave, by his laughter, an epigrammatic
turn to the ladyish gossip of his companions. Mrs. Middleton
entertained the best hopes. When they had left the table she betook
herself to her arm-chair, and erected a little hand-screen before her
face, behind which she slept or not, as you choose. Roger, suddenly
bethinking himself that if Miss Sands had been made a party to the
old lady’s views, his alacrity of manner might compromise him,
checked his vivacity, and asked his companion stiffly if she played
the piano. On her confessing to this accomplishment, he of course
proceeded to open the instrument which stood in the adjoining room.
Here Miss Sands sat down and played with great resolution an
exquisite composition of Schubert. As she struck the last note he
uttered some superlative of praise. She was silent for a moment, and
then, “That is a thing I rarely play,” she said.
“It is very difficult, I suppose.”
“It is not only difficult, but it is too sad.”
“Sad!” cried Roger, “I should call it very joyous.”
“You must be in very good spirits! I take it to have been meant for
pure sadness. This is what should suit your mood!” and she attacked
with great animation one of Strauss’s waltzes. But she had played
but a dozen chords when he interrupted her. “Spare me,” he said. “I
may be glad, but not with that gladness. I confess that I am in
spirits. I have just had a letter from that young friend of whom I
spoke to you.”
“Your adopted daughter? Mrs. Middleton told me about her.”
“Mrs. Middleton,” said Roger, in downright fashion, “knows nothing
about her. Mrs. Middleton,” and he lowered his voice and laughed,
“is not an oracle of wisdom.” He glanced into the other room at
their hostess and her complaisant screen. He felt with peculiar
intensity that, whether she was napping or no, she was a sadly
superficial,—in fact a positively immoral,—old woman. It seemed
absurd to believe that this fair, wise creature before him had lent
herself to a scheme of such a one’s making. He looked awhile at her
deep clear eyes and her gracious lips. It would be a satisfaction to
smile with her over Mrs. Middleton’s machinations. “Do you know what
she wants to do with us?” he went on. “She wants to make a match
between us.”
He waited for her smile, but it was heralded by a blush,—a blush
portentous, formidable, tragical. Like a sudden glow of sunset in a
noonday sky, it covered her fair face and burned on her cloudless
brow. “The deuce!” thought Roger. “Can it be,—can it be?” The
smile he had invoked followed fast; but this was not the order of
nature.
“A match between _us_!” said Miss Sands. “What a brilliant idea!”
“Not that I cannot easily imagine falling in love with you,” Roger
rejoined: “but—but—”
“But you are in love with some one else.” Her eyes, for a moment,
rested on him intently. “With your protégée!”
Roger hesitated. It seemed odd to be making this sacred confidence
to a stranger; but with this matter of Mrs. Middleton’s little
arrangement between them, she was hardly a stranger. If he had
offended her, too, the part of gallantry was to admit everything.
“Yes, I am in love!” he said. “And with the young lady you so much
resemble. She doesn’t know it. Only one or two persons know it,
save yourself. It is the secret of my life, Miss Sands. She is
abroad. I have wished to do what I could for her. It is an odd sort
of position, you know. I have brought her up with the view of making
her my wife, but I have never breathed a word of it to her. She must
choose for herself. My hope is that she will choose me. But Heaven
knows what turn she may take, what may happen to her over there in
Rome. I hope for the best; but I think of little else. Meanwhile I
go about with a sober face, and eat and sleep and talk, like the rest
of the world; but all the while I am counting the hours. Really, I
don’t know what has set me going in this way. I don’t suppose you
will at all understand my situation; but you are evidently so good
that I feel as if I might count on your sympathy.”
Miss Sands listened with her eyes bent downward, and with great
gravity. When he had spoken, she gave him her hand with a certain
passionate abruptness. “You have my sympathy!” she said. “Much good
may it do you! I know nothing of your friend, but it is hard to
fancy her disappointing you. I perhaps don’t altogether enter into
your situation. It is novel, but it is extremely interesting. I
hope before rejecting you she will think twice. I don’t bestow my
esteem at random, but you have it, Mr. Lawrence, absolutely.” And
with these words she rose. At the same moment their hostess
suspended her siesta, and the conversation became general. It can
hardly be said, however, to have prospered. Miss Sands talked with a
certain gracious zeal which was not unallied, I imagine, to a desire
to efface the trace of that superb blush I have attempted to
chronicle. Roger brooded and wondered; and Mrs. Middleton, fancying
that things were not going well, expressed her displeasure by abusing
every one who was mentioned. She took heart again for the moment
when, on the young lady’s carriage being announced, the latter,
turning in farewell to Roger, asked him if he ever came to New York.
“When you are next there,” she said, “you must make a point of coming
to see me. You will have something to tell me.”
After she had gone Roger demanded of Mrs. Middleton whether she had
imparted to Miss Sands her scheme for their common felicity. “Never
mind what I said or did not say,” she replied. “She knows enough not
to be taken unawares. And now tell me—” But Roger would tell her
nothing. He made his escape, and as he walked home in the frosty
starlight, his face wore a smile of the most shameless elation. He
had gone up in the market. Nora might do worse! There stood that
beautiful woman knocking at his door.
A few evenings after this Roger called upon Hubert. Not immediately,
but on what may be called the second line of conversation, Hubert
asked him what news he had from Nora. Roger replied by reading her
letter aloud. For some moments after he had finished Hubert was
silent. “‘One grows more in a month in this wonderful Rome,’” he
said at last, quoting, “‘than in a year at home.’”
“Grow, grow, grow, and Heaven speed it!” said Roger.
“She is growing, you may depend upon it.”
“Of course she is; and yet,” said Roger, discriminatingly, “there is
a kind of girlish freshness, a childish simplicity, in her style.”
“Strongly marked,” said Hubert, laughing. “I have just got a letter
from her you would take to be written by a child of ten.”
“_You_ have a letter?”
“It came an hour ago. Let me read it.”
“Had you written to her?”
“Not a word. But you will see.” And Hubert in his dressing-gown,
standing before the fire, with the same silver-sounding accents Nora
had admired, distilled her own gentle prose into Roger’s attentive
ear.
“‘I have not forgotten your asking me to write to you about your
beloved Pincian view. Indeed, I have been daily reminded of it by
having that same view continually before my eyes. From my own window
I see the same dark Rome, the same blue Campagna. I have rigorously
performed my promise, however, of ascending to your little terrace.
I have an old German friend here, a perfect archæologist in
petticoats, in whose company I think as little of climbing to
terraces and towers as of diving into catacombs and crypts. We chose
the finest day of the winter, and made the pilgrimage together. The
plaster-merchant is still in the basement. We saw him in his
doorway, standing to dry, whitened over as if he meant personally to
be cast. We reached your terrace in safety. It was flooded with
light,—you know the Roman light,—the yellow and the purple. A
young painter who occupies your rooms had set up his easel under an
umbrella in the open air. A young _contadina_ imported, I suppose,
from the Piazza di Spagna, was sitting to him in the sunshine, which
deepened her brown face, her blue-black hair, and her white
head-cloth. He was flattering her to his heart’s content, and of
course to hers. When I want my portrait painted, I shall know where
to go. My friend explained to him that we had come to look at his
terrace on behalf of an unhappy far-away American gentleman who had
once been lodger there. Hereupon he was charmingly polite. He
showed us the little _salotto_, the fragment of bas-relief inserted
in the wall,—was it there in your day?—and a dozen of his own
pictures. One of them was a very pretty version of the view from the
terrace. Does it betray an indecent greed for applause to let you
know that I bought it, and that, if you are very good and write me a
delightful long letter, you shall have it when I get home? It seemed
to me that you would be glad to learn that your little habitation is
not turned to baser uses, and that genius and ambition may still be
found there. In your case, I suppose, they were not found in company
with dark-eyed _contadine_, though they had an admirer in the person
of that poor little American sculptress. I asked the young painter
if she had left any memory behind her. Only a memory, it appears.
She died a month after his arrival. I never was so bountifully
thanked for anything as for buying our young man’s picture. As he
poured out his lovely Italian gratitude, I felt like some patronizing
duchess of the Renaissance. You will have to do your best, when I
transfer the picture to your hands, to give as pretty a turn to your
thanks. This is only one specimen of a hundred delightful rambles I
have had with Mlle. Stamm. We go a great deal to the churches; I
never tire of them. Not in the least that I am turning Papist;
though in Mrs. Keith’s society, if I chose to do so, I might treat
myself to the luxury of being a nine days’ wonder, (admire my
self-denial!) but because they are so picturesque and historic; so
redolent of memories, so rich with traditions, so haunted with the
past. To go into most of the churches is like reading some novel,
better than I find most novels. They are for different days. On a
fine day, if I have on my best bonnet, if I have been to a party the
night before, I like to go to Santa-Maria Maggiore. Standing there,
I dream, I dream, I dream; I should be ashamed to tell you the
nonsense I _do_ dream! On a rainy day, when I tramp out with Mlle.
Stamm in my waterproof; when the evening before, instead of going to
a party, I have sat quietly at home reading Rio’s “Art Chrétien”
(recommended by the Abbé Leblond, Mrs. Keith’s confessor), I like to
go to the Ara Cœli. There you stand among the very bric-à-brac of
Christian history. Something takes you at the throat,—but you will
have felt it; I needn’t try to define the indefinable. Nevertheless,
in spite of M. Rio and the Abbé Leblond (he is a very charming old
man too, and a keeper of _ladies’_ consciences, if there ever was
one), there is small danger of my changing my present faith for one
that will make it a sin to go and hear you preach. Of course, we
don’t only haunt the churches. I know in a way the Vatican, the
Capitol, and those charming galleries of the great palaces. Of
course, you know them far better. I am stopped short on every side
by my deplorable ignorance; still, as far as may be given to a silly
girl, I enjoy. I wish you were here, or that I knew some benevolent
man of culture. My little German duenna is a marvel of learning and
communicativeness, and when she fairly harangues me, I feel as if in
my single person I were a young ladies’ boarding-school. But only a
man can talk really to the point of this manliest of cities. Mrs.
Keith sees a great many gentlemen of one sort and another; but what
do they know of Brutus and Augustus, of Emperors and Popes? I shall
keep my impressions, such as they are, and we shall talk them over at
our leisure. I shall bring home plenty of photographs; we shall have
charming evenings looking at them. Roger writes that he means next
winter to take a furnished house in town. You must come often and
see us. We are to spend the summer in England.... Do you often see
Roger? I suppose so,—he wrote he was having a ‘capital winter.’ By
the way, I am ‘out.’ I go to balls and wear Paris dresses. I toil
not, neither do I spin. There is apparently no end to my banker’s
account, and Mrs. Keith sets me a prodigious example of buying. Is
Roger meanwhile going about with patched elbows?”
At this point Hubert stopped, and, on Roger’s asking him if there was
nothing more, declared that the rest was private. “As you please,”
said Roger. “By Jove! what a letter,—what a letter!”
Several months later, in September, he hired for the ensuing winter a
small furnished house. Mrs. Keith and her companion were expected to
reach home on the 10th of October. On the 6th, Roger took possession
of his house. Most of the rooms had been repainted, and on preparing
to establish himself in one for the night, Roger found that the fresh
paint emitted such an odor as to make his position untenable.
Exploring the premises, he discovered in the lower regions, in a kind
of sub-basement, a small vacant apartment, destined to a servant, in
which he had a bed put up. It was damp, but, as he thought, not too
damp, the basement being dry, as basements go. For three nights be
occupied this room. On the fourth morning he woke up with a chill
and a headache. By noon he had a fever. The physician, being sent
for, pronounced him seriously ill, and assured him that he had been
guilty of a gross imprudence. He might as well have slept in a
burial-vault. It was the first sanitary indiscretion Roger had ever
committed; he had a dismal foreboding of its results. Towards
evening the fever deepened, and he began to lose his head. He was
still distinctly conscious that Nora was to arrive on the morrow, and
sadly disgusted that she was to find him in this sorry plight. It
was a bitter disappointment that he might not meet her at the
steamer. Still, Hubert might go. He sent for Hubert accordingly,
who was brought to his bedside. “I shall be all right in a day or
two,” he said, “but meanwhile some one must receive Nora. I know you
will be glad to do it, you villain!”
Hubert declared that he was no villain, but that he should be happy
to perform this service. As he looked at his poor fever-stricken
cousin, however, he doubted strongly if Roger would be “all right” in
a day or two. On the morrow he went down to the ship.