“It’s nothing, I suppose, that a few days’ quiet won’t set right?” he asked quickly.

“I don’t know, I’m sure,” answered the doctor.  “It’s more serious than I thought by what you said—­a great deal more serious.  I don’t know, I’m sure, whether we shall get him round at all.”

A little cry startled both men and made them look round.  In a recess of the corridor above they could distinguish the figure of a woman, and Mr. Wedmore’s heart smote him, for it was Doreen.

“Go away, child!  Go away!” said he, half petulantly, but yet with some remorse in his tone.  “The girl’s crazy about him,” he added, with irritation, when his daughter had silently obeyed.

“Poor child!  Poor child!” said Doctor Haselden, sympathetically.  “She’s the real old-fashioned sort, with a warm heart under all her little airs.  I hope he’ll get round, if only for her sake.  But—­”

“She couldn’t marry him in any case,” said Mr. Wedmore, shortly.  “I thought I told you that affair was broken off—­definitely broken off—­weeks ago.  And now—­”

He stopped and intimated by a gesture of the hand that the break was more definite than ever.

The doctor was curious, but he tried not to show it.

“I should wire up to town for another nurse, I think,” said he.  “This little girl can’t do it all.”

Mr. Wedmore pricked up his ears.

“Then I must wire for two—­for two nurses,” said he, decidedly.  “We’re going to send this girl off.  She’s not a nurse at all.”

“Ah, but she does very well,” objected the doctor, promptly, “and you will be doing very unwisely if you send her away.  It seems she understands all the circumstances of the case, and that counts for something in treating a patient who has evidently something on his mind.  She seems to be able to soothe him, and in a case of concussion—­”

“But she’s trying to get hold of my fool of a son Max!” protested Mr. Wedmore.

“But it isn’t a question of your son Max, but of young Horne,” said Doctor Haselden, with decision.  “As for Max, he can take care of himself; and, at any rate, he’s got all his family about to take care of him.  You keep the girl.  She’s got a head on her shoulders.  Most uncommon thing, that—­in a girl with such eyes!”

And the doctor, with a humorous nod to his angry friend, went downstairs.

After this warning of the real danger in which Dudley lay, it was, of course, impossible for Mr. Wedmore to send poor Carrie away, at any rate until the arrival of some one who could take her place.  And as there was clearly some sense in the doctor’s suggestion that her knowledge of the case was valuable, Mr. Wedmore ended by sending up for one trained nurse to relieve her, instead of for two, as he had proposed.

And, after all, there seemed to be less danger in the direction of Max than he had supposed; for Carrie never once left the sick-room until the professional nurse arrived at ten o’clock that night.  And as Mrs. Wedmore was then in waiting to mount guard over Carrie, and to carry her off to her supper and then to her bedroom, the first day’s danger to the susceptible son and heir seemed to have been got through rather well.