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Updated: May 7, 2025
Dinner was finished we dined at six, the Bruges hour and Alresca lay on his invalid's couch, ejecting from his mouth rings of the fine blue smoke of a Javanese cigar, a box of which I had found at the tobacco shop kept by two sisters at the corner of the Grande Place.
"I had no idea you were so poetical," said Jessie, much surprised at the invalid's enthusiasm. "Sickness has a tendency to make people poetical. I suppose," returned the captain. "But how are you to manage it? You can scarcely walk yet. Then excuse me, you haven't got a ship, and I fear that not many owners would intrust one to you till you are stronger. So, what will you do?"
When the introductions were over, Mrs. Danvers said she was tired, and must rest a little. Very few words will do justice to her personal appearance. Brevity, and breadth, and bluntness were her chief characteristics, which applied equally to her figure, her face, and her extremities, and, not unfrequently, to her speech too. Her health was really infirm, but she never could attain the object of many an invalid's harmless ambition looking interesting. Illness made her cheeks look pasty, but not pale; it could not fine down the coarsely moulded features, or purify their ignoble outline. Her voice was against her, certainly; perhaps this was the reason why, when she bemoaned herself, so many irreverent and hard-hearted reprobates called it "whining." It was very unfortunate; for few could be found, even in the somewhat exacting class to which she belonged, more anxious and active in enlisting sympathy. She was looking especially ill-tempered just then, but Major Keene was not easily daunted, and he went in at her straight and gallantly about the weather, it is needless to say, both being English. While Mrs. Danvers was disagreeing with him, Cecil took her turn at inspection. Royston's name was familiar to her, of course, for no one ever talked to Mrs. Molyneux for ten minutes without hearing it. Though she had scarcely glanced at him in the morning, she had decided that the tall, erect figure and the enormous mustache, with its crocs
"The way will open," was one of her favorite sayings, and nine times out of ten it did. It had opened up opportunely when Miss Clyde asked her to take little Gabriel and his nurse from the city hospital. The pantry had been deplorably bare, and the very substantial check that preceded the invalid's coming had been a godsend.
There were hours which he gave to going about in a gondola with Clementina, whom he forbade to be always at the invalid's side. He tried to reassure her as to Mrs. Lander's health, when he found her rather mute and absent, while they drifted in the silvery sun of the late April weather, just beginning to be warm, but not warm enough yet for the tent of the open gondola. He asked her about Mrs.
Within the last few days the invalid's irritability had taken the form of intense dislike for the jingle of the telephone and in deference to his whim it had been disconnected. Consequently the family friend had of late both mailed and delivered notes between the lovers and knew the handwriting of each. That night Stuart slept not at all.
The next morning dawned gray and pale and chill, after the manner of early spring mornings, let them ripen into never such balmy days; and with the dawn Nancy Woolper came into the invalid's chamber, more wan and sickly of aspect than the morning itself. Mrs. Halliday started from an uneasy slumber. "What's the matter, Nancy?" she asked with considerable alarm.
The next time she awoke, he carried her inside; and at the door of the tent, where he could look at her, and speak to her, he cooked her the best invalid's supper the grub-box and his own skill could afford. This same grub-box was an ever-fresh cause of anxiety to him; allowing for liberal contributions from his own gun, he could not see much more than a week's supply for two.
Perhaps some day or other: And the little cripple, leaning over her work, started upon one of those long journeys to the land of chimeras of which she had made so many in her invalid's easychair, with her feet resting on the stool; one of those wonderful journeys from which she always returned happy and smiling, leaning on Frantz's arm with all the confidence of a beloved wife.
Besides, at the present time she was smiling oddly, as if she were pleased and displeased at the same time. "I don't think that you need adopt me as your sister," she remarked. Until this moment they had both continued standing. Now Sally made a little motion toward the invalid's chair which Miss Patricia had removed from their sitting-room to bestow upon her patient.
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