He had noticed the old man straighten
himself with a spring and stand as though petrified when Ingolby said:
"Why don't you turn on the light?" As he looked round in that instant of
ghastly silence he had observed almost mechanically that the old man's
lips were murmuring something. Then the thought of Fleda Druse shot into
Rockwell's mind, and it harassed him during the hours Ingolby slept, and
after the giant Gipsy had taken his departure just before the dawn.
"I'm afraid it will mean more there than anywhere else," he said sadly to
himself. "There was evidently something between those two; and she isn't
the kind to take it philosophically. Poor girl! Poor girl! It's a
bitter dose, if there was anything in it," he added.
He watched beside the sick-bed till the dawn stared in and his patient
stirred and waked, then he took Ingolby's hand, grown a little cooler,
in both his own. "How are you feeling, old man?" he asked cheerfully.
"You've had a good sleep-nearly three and a half hours. Is the pain in
the head less?"
"Better, Sawbones, better," Ingolby replied cheerfully. "They've
loosened the tie that binds--begad, it did stretch the nerves.
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