The nurse bit her lip.
"Get another bottle and open it in here." Lindrum's tone was low and almost apologetic. "It's apt to taste flat unless opened at the moment of drinking."
She went out silently.
"How I loathe that woman!" Craig spoke with energy. He bit back an "I don't trust her," and said instead, "By the way, just hand me back that letter I gave you, will you? I want to add a postscript."
Lindrum handed it to him and Craig levered up the flap with a touch from a paper knife, added a couple of lines and refastened it. The gum was still damp.
"I'm sorry you don't like the nurse," Lindrum said while this was being done. "She's very capable. However, you won't have any need of her much longer."
"You think not?" Craig asked slowly, handing him the letter again, while his eyes lingered on the doctor's face with a probing, searching stare.
There was a moment's silence. Usually' Craig had a string of complaints, the complaints of a man not used to being ill, and a stream of impatient wonder that, after nearly a month's illness, he was no better. But today there was a cold, bleak withdrawal, quite different from anything that he had shown before.
Lindrum broke the silence by asking for a rubber band, as the letter entrusted to him partly slipped from the papers he held.
"I haven't any bands to spare," was the reply.
"My dear chap!" Lindrum's eyes looked meaningly and reproachfully at the roll-top writing cabinet. "Look in there."
"You can get some at the shop just outside." Craig made no move toward the table in question.
"Hope I shall never be in need of a life-line with you on shore," Lindrum said laughingly. "You'd shout to me to get one in Davy Jones's locker." He held out his hand to his patient. "Cheer up, and don't feel so doubtful of your progress. Malaria is a tricky thing. So is summer cholera, as the people call it. And when you get both together, you get a trying combination."
Craig nodded almost contemptuously.
"Look here!" Lindrum said suddenly, looking at him in his turn rather hard, his finger on the other's pulse. "What about a consultation? I've tried all the usual treatments; let's see if there isn't something fresh. When I'm in town this afternoon I'll look in at—"
"I'll talk that over with you tomorrow afternoon," Craig said in a weary but very decided voice. "I think I shall sleep a little now." There was a tap on the door, a light tap that changed both men's faces. Into each came a brightness, a glow, as though the sun himself stood without. Craig lost his sleepy look.
"Come in!" His voice was clearer than a moment ago, his face seemed to fill out as the door opened.
Countess Alexandra—Jura, as she was called—came in with a sprig of mignonette in her long Byzantine hands. Ronald Craig seemed to drink her in as she stepped to the bed and stood looking down at the man whom she was to marry in a couple of months with a grave, speculative look in her young face.
Of its claim to beauty there were two quite opposite opinions. Some people considered her plain, but for her clear creamy complexion. While some, on the other hand, thought her very lovely, and to this group belonged the two men in the room.
To Lindrum, as he looked at her, his heart thumping, she seemed like a beautiful tea-rose. The comparison was not inapt as far as tints went. A tea-rose's soft creams, and yellows, and shell-pinks were all reproduced in her. In her pale honey hair, her pale ivory skin, her cheeks but faintly streaked with color. Even her lips were but a shade deeper. Nothing about her was vivid. To Craig she was like a wash-drawing on vellum come alive, a drawing made by some Byzantine artist, with her eyes that suggested a slanted setting, her high cheek-bones, her slender, almost attenuated, body. To him, as to Lindrum, she was fragile and perfect.
Her long narrow eyes, in color they suggested amber seen through smoke, were bent on the sick man as she gently tapped one of his hands, the hand that would have clasped hers, with the mignonette spray.
"You should be out in the sunshine." Her voice was faintly hard. A hardness of accent, Lindrum thought, rather than of actual timbre.
"I hope to be soon," Craig said eagerly.
"Bravo!" applauded the doctor. "That's the spirit." The other had not spoken so hopefully during the whole interview this morning.
"Stay and talk to me!" urged her fiance. She shook her head, not smiling. Jura rarely smiled.
"I am going to write a letter and then I am going to try on a dress." She spoke without any accent, yet not as an English girl would have run the words together.
She looked around for a tumbler, found one, and put the sprig in water.
"It's the only flower you have ever picked for me," Craig said sentimentally.
"Lady Craig picked it," Jura said flatly, "together with some sweet peas."
Lady Craig was the widow of the former owner of the house, a knight who had been the sick man's cousin. She was the only dowager in the family, so Woodthorp Manor was hers to live in during her lifetime. Ronald Craig had been taken ill over three weeks ago now while on a week-end visit. As for Countess Jura, the Russian was an orphan, and Lady Craig was bringing her out.
"But one must not put mignonette in with sweet peas," Jura went on. "One cannot have the two together," she said again, as though the fact interested her and might interest him. "One can have either alone—but not both."
"Why not?" Craig asked, as he pulled the stem through a buttonhole of his creased pyjama jacket. Craig was not a fastidious man, as his crumpled appearance showed, in spite of all the efforts of the nurse to smarten him up.
"The one or the other will die." She still looked dreamily at the flower. Lindrum left them and said a word to the nurse outside.
"I don't like the way this thing, or these things, are dragging on. Craig is losing strength, not gaining any. He seemed so much better for a while after you came, but these last days..."
Countess Jura came out. She had caught the last sentences, and motioned him to follow her to a distant window.
"Do you think he is going to die?" she asked under her breath, but without a tremor.
"Certainly not!" Lindrum said explosively.
She met his expostulatory gaze with a blank look.
"It is not a sin to die. People do it all the time. Especially sick people." And turning, she passed on to her room, her skirt swaying to her steps.
Lindrum was very white when he rejoined the nurse, who also stood watching the Russian girl.
"I'm always so sorry for Countess Jura." She spoke very quietly. "Of course, a nurse is supposed to have neither eyes nor ears except for her patient—and the doctor," she added, a trifle sardonically. "But, as I told you when I came, I think it's very pitiful about Countess Jura."
He said nothing.
"She's so helpless. And she's being forced into a marriage, as we both know. However, perhaps something will turn up to prevent it." Her eyes were carefully on some notes she was making of what he had ordered for her patient.
As for Lindrum, he only shot her a swift, uneasy glance. He should have made some scathing reply, but, though a nurse, Mrs. Kingsmill was also a doctor's daughter, and his sister's friend.
"Why not take her out for a spin this afternoon?" she suggested.
He shook his head. "Too much to do; besides, Craig wants me to drop a very important letter in the letterbox as I pass Pont Street. A letter to a cousin of his."
"Well, why not take Countess Jura? Pont Street means Sloane Street, which in its turn means Brompton Road, which in its turn means shopping, which