Nothing could have been more exquisite than Cecilia’s sympathy.  Indeed, she did feel a good deal moved, and was a superb actress at all times.

She only stayed a very short while, not to tire him, and John Derringham, left alone, was conscious that he had been soothed and pleased, and she departed leaving the impression that her love for him was only kept within bounds by fear for his health!

She had suffered so during all the days! she told him, she could hardly eat or sleep.  And then to be debarred from nursing him!—­the cruelty of it!  Why the doctors should have thought her presence would be more disturbing than Arabella’s, she could not think!  And here she looked down, and her white hand, with its perfectly kept nails, lying upon the coverlet so near him, John Derringham lifted it in his feeble grasp and touched it with his lips.  He was so grateful for her kindness—­and affected by her beauty; he could not do less, he felt.

And after that, with a deliciously girlish and confused gasp, Mrs. Cricklander had hastily quitted the room.

It was not until the second day that she came again—­and he had begun to wish for her.

This time she was bright and amusing, and assumed airs of authority over him, and was careful never to sit so that her hand might be in reach, while she used every one of her many arts of tantalization and enjoyed herself as only she knew how to do.

It was perfectly divine to have him there to play upon like a violin and to know it was only a question of time before she would secure him for her own!

After this, she had visitors in the house and did not come for three days, and John Derringham felt a little peevish and aggrieved.  It rained, too, and his head ached still with the slightest exertion.

He now began to put all thoughts of Halcyone away from him, as far as he was able.  It was too late to do anything—­she must think him base, as she had never sent him one word.  This caused him restless anguish.  What was the meaning of it all?  Could she have learned in the light of the world that it was not a very great position he had offered her, and so despised him in consequence?  What aspect of it might they not have put into her head—­these people she was with—­this step-mother of whom he had never heard?  In all cases Fate had parted them, and he must cut the pain of it from his life or it would destroy him.  It never occurred to him to reflect upon the possible agony she might be suffering, his poor little wood-nymph, all alone.  The fact of his own unhappiness filled his mind to the exclusion of any other thought for the time.  In his dire physical weakness Cecilia Cricklander’s gracious beauty seemed to augment, and Halcyone’s sylph-like charm to grow of less potent force.  For Love had not done all that he would yet do with John Derringham’s soul.

That underneath, if he could have chosen between the two women, he would have hesitated for a second was not the case; only physical weakness, and circumstance and propinquity were working for the one and against the other—­and so it would appear was Fate.