Have any of you who read crept back to life from nearly beyond the grave? Crept back to find it shorn of all that made it fair? After hours of delirium to awaken in great weakness to a sense of hideous anguish and loss--to the prospect of days of aching void and hopeless longing, to the hourly, momentary sting of remembrance of things vaster than death, more dear than life itself? If you have come through this valley of the shadow, then you can know what the first days of returning consciousness meant to Paul.
He never really questioned the finality of her decree, he sensed it meant parting for ever. And yet, with that spring of eternal hope which animates all living souls, unbidden arguings and possibilities rose in his enfeebled brain, and deepened his unrest. Thus his progress towards convalescence was long and slow.
And all this time his father and Tompson had nursed him in the old Venetian palazzo with tenderest devotion.
The Italian servants had been left, paid up for a month, but the lady and her Russian retinue had vanished, leaving no trace.
Both Tompson and Sir Charles knew almost the whole story now from Paul's ravings, and neither spoke of it--except that Tompson supplied some links to complete Sir Charles' picture.
"She was the most splendid lady you could wish to see, Sir Charles," the stolid creature finished with. "Her servants worshipped her--and if Mr. Verdayne is ill now, he is ill for no less than a Queen"'
This fact comforted Tompson greatly, but Paul's father found in it no consolation.
The difficulty had been to prevent his mother from descending upon them. She must ever be kept in ignorance of this episode in her son's life. She belonged to the class of intellect which could never have understood. It would have been an undying shock and horrified grief to the end of her life--excellent, loving, conventional lady!
So after the first terrible danger was over, Sir Charles made light of their son's illness. Paul and he were enjoying Venice, he said, and would soon be home. "D--d hard luck the boy getting fever like this!" he wrote in his laconic style, "but one never could trust foreign countries' drains!"
And the Lady Henrietta waited in unsuspecting, well-bred patience.
Those were weary days for every one concerned. It wrung his father's heart to see Paul prostrate there, as weak as an infant. All his splendid youth and strength conquered by this raging blast. It was sad to have to listen to his ever-constant moan: "Darling, come back to me--darling, my Queen."