She said nothing, but presently the girl found her
with her teeth locked and eyes fixed in what looked like a
convulsion, but was in reality such suppressed hysteria as she had
had before.
She soon came out of that attack, but was exceedingly ill all that
night and the next day, her recovery being altogether thrown back by
feverishness and loss of appetite; but, strange child that she was,
she never named Harold, nor let me speak of him. I think she
instinctively shrank from her own emotion, and had a kind of dread
and jealous horror of seeing anyone else grieve for him.
Dermot did not come the next day, but a note was brought me, left,
the servant said, by the gentleman in a cab. It told me that he felt
so ill that he thought it wisest to go at once to the smallpox
hospital, and find out whether it were the disease, or only
vaccination and fatigue. It was a brave unselfish resolve, full of
the spirit he had imbibed, and it was wise, for the illness was upon
him already, the more severe from his exhausted state and the shock
he had undergone. Mr. Randall Horsman, who was very kind, managed
that I should hear of him, and I knew he was going on fairly well,
and not in any special danger.
But oh! that time seems to me the most wretched that ever I passed,
up in those great London attic nurseries, where Dora and I were
prisoners--all winter fogginess, with the gas from below sending up
its light on the ceiling, and Dora never letting me sit still to
grieve.
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