Nap, turning swiftly, noted the fact.  “You are not so well to-night?”

“Sit down,” his brother repeated gently.  “How is Lady Carfax?”

Nap sat down with some reluctance.  He looked as if he would have preferred to prowl.

“She is still unconscious, and likely to remain so.  The doctor thinks very seriously of her.”

“Her husband has been informed?”

“Her husband,” said Nap from between his teeth, “has been informed, and he declines to come to her.  That’s the sort of brute he is.”

Lucas Errol made no comment, and after a moment Nap continued: 

“It is just as well perhaps.  I hear he is never sober after a day’s sport.  And I believe she hates the sight of him if the truth were told—­and small wonder!”

There was unrestrained savagery in the last words.  Lucas turned his head and looked at him thoughtfully.

“You know her rather well?” he said.

“Yes.”  Nap’s eyes, glowing redly, met his with a gleam of defiance.

“You have known her for long?” The question was perfectly quiet, uttered in the tired voice habitual to this man who had been an invalid for almost the whole of his manhood.

Yet Nap frowned as he heard it.  “I don’t know,” he said curtly.  “I don’t estimate friendships by time.”

Lucas said no more, but he continued to look at his brother with unvarying steadiness till at length, as if goaded thereto, Nap spoke again.

“We are friends,” he said, “no more, no less.  You all think me a blackguard, I know.  It’s my speciality, isn’t it?” He spoke with exceeding bitterness.  “But in this case you are wrong.  I repeat—­we are friends.”

He said it aggressively; his tone was almost a challenge, but the elder Errol did not appear to notice.

“I have never thought you a blackguard, Boney,” he said quietly.

Nap’s thin lips smiled cynically.  “You have never said it.”

“I have never thought it.”  There was no contradicting the calm assertion.  It was not the way of the world to contradict Lucas Errol.  “And I know you better than a good many,” he said.

Nap stirred restlessly and was silent.

Lucas turned his eyes from him and seemed to fall into a reverie.  Suddenly, however, he roused himself.

“What does the doctor say about her?”

Nap frowned.  “He says very little.  After the manner of his tribe, he is afraid to commit himself; thinks there may be this injury or there may be that, but says definitely nothing.  I shall get someone down from town to-morrow.  I’d go tonight, only—­” he broke off, hammering impotently with his clenched fist on the arm of his chair.  “I must be at hand to-night,” he said, after a moment, controlling himself.  “The mater has promised to call me if there is any change.  You see,” he spoke half-apologetically, “she might feel kind of lonely waking up in a crowd of strangers, and mine is the only face she knows.”