Very strangely the thought of Eustace never came to her, or coming, but flitted unrecorded and undetained across the surface of her mind. He had receded with all the rest of the world into the far, far distance that lay behind her. He had no place in this region of many shadows where these others so tenderly guided her wandering feet. No one else had any place there save old Biddy who, being never absent, seemed a part of the atmosphere, and the doctor who came and went like a presiding genie in that waste of desolation.
She did not welcome his visits, although he was invariably kind, for on one occasion she caught a low murmur from him to the effect that her mother had better come to her, and this suggestion had thrown her into a most painful state of apprehension. She had implored them weeping to let her mother stay away, and they had hushed her with soothing promises; but she never saw the doctor thereafter without a nervous dread that she might also see her mother's gaunt figure accompanying him. And she was sure--quite sure--that her mother would be very angry with her when she saw her helplessness.
Nightmares of her mother's advent began to trouble her. She would start up in anguish of soul, scarcely believing in the soothing arms that held her till their tenderness hushed her back to calmness.
"No one can come to you, sweetheart, while I am here." How often she heard the low words murmured lovingly over her head! "See, I am holding you! You are quite safe. No one can take you from me."
And Dinah would cling to her beloved empress till her panic died away.
On one of these occasions Scott was present, and he presently left the sick-room with a look in his eyes that gave him a curiously hard expression. He went deliberately in search of Billy whom he found playing a not very spirited game with the two little daughters of the establishment. The weather had broken, and several people had left in consequence.
Billy was bored as well as anxious, and his attitude said as much as he unceremoniously left his small playfellows to join Scott.
"Just amusin' the kids," he observed explanatorily. "How is she now?"
Scott linked his hand in the boy's arm. "She's pretty bad, Billy," he said. "Both lungs are affected. The doctor thinks badly of her, though he still hopes he may pull her through."
"You may you mean," returned Billy. "Can't say the de Vignes have put themselves out at all over her. There's Rose flirts all day long with your brother, and Lady Grace grumbling continually about the folly of undertaking other people's responsibilities. She swears she must get back at the end of next week for their precious house-party. And the Colonel fumes and says the same. I told him I shouldn't go unless she was out of danger, though goodness knows, sir, I don't want to sponge on you."