I tell you that I am
ready to go mad. If anything should happen to you, Miss Racksole,
I would kill myself.'
'But why?' she questioned. 'Supposing, that is, that anything could
happen to me - which it can't.'
'Because I have dragged you into this,' he replied, gazing at her. 'It
is nothing to you. You are only being kind.'
'How do you know it is nothing to me, Prince?' she asked him
quickly.
Just then the sick man made a convulsive movement, and Nella
flew to the bed and soothed him. From the head of the bed she
looked over at Prince Aribert, and he returned her bright, excited
glance. She was in her travelling-frock, with a large white Belgian
apron tied over it. Large dark circles of fatigue and sleeplessness
surrounded her eyes, and to the Prince her cheek seemed hollow
and thin; her hair lay thick over the temples, half covering the ears.
Aribert gave no answer to her query - merely gazed at her with
melancholy intensity.
'I think I will go and rest,' she said at last. 'You will know all about
the medicine.'
'Sleep well,' he said, as he softly opened the door for her. And then
he was alone with Eugen. It was his turn that night to watch, for
they still half-expected some strange, sudden visit, or onslaught, or
move of one kind or another from Jules. Racksole slept in the
parlour on the ground floor.
Nella had the front bedroom on the first floor; Miss Spencer was
immured in the attic; the last-named lady had been singularly quiet
and incurious, taking her food from Nella and asking no questions,
the old woman went at nights to her own abode in the purlieus of
the harbour.
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