for the first time in weeks of these exercises.  The world shrank, for Laura, to the compass of the kerosene lamps; there was no gaze from its wider sphere against which she must key herself to indifference.  When on the second and third evenings she was equally undisturbed, it was borne in upon her that either she or Mr. Arnold, or both, had prevailed, and she offered up thanks.  On the fourth she reflected recurrently and anxiously that it was not after all a very glorious victory if the Devil had carried off the wounded; if Lindsay, after all the opportunities that had been his, should slip back without profit to the level from which she had striven—­they had all striven—­to lift him.  Mrs. Sand, not satisfied to be buffeted by such speculations, sent a four-anna bit to the head bearer at the club on her own account and obtained information.

Alicia saw no immediate privilege in the complication, though the circumstances taken together did present a vulgar opportunity which Mrs. Barberry came for hours to take advantage of.  There were the usual two nurses as well as Mrs. Barberry; Alicia could take the Arab further afield than ever, and she did.  One can imagine her cantering fast and far with a sense of conscious possession in spite of Mrs. Barberry and the two nurses.  There may be a certain solace in the definite and continuous knowledge available about a person hovering on the brink of typhoid under your own roof tree.  It was as grave as that; Surgeon-Major Livingstone could not make up his mind.  Alicia knew only of this uncertainty; other satisfactions were reserved for the nurses and Mrs. Barberry.  She could see that her brother was anxious, he was so uniformly cheerful, so brisk and fresh and good-tempered coming from Lindsay’s room in the morning, to say at breakfast that the temperature was the same, hadn’t budged a point, must manage to get it down somehow in the next twenty-four hours, and forthwith to envelop himself in the newspapers.  Those arbitrary and obstinate figures, which stood for apprehension to the most casual ear, stamped themselves on most things as the day wore on, and at tea-time Mrs. Barberry gave her other details, thinking her rather cold in the reception of them.  But she plainly preferred to be out of it, avoiding the nurses on the stairs, refraining from so much as a glance at the boiled-milk preparations of the butler.  “And you know,” said Mrs. Barberry, recountant, “how these people have to be watched.”  To Mrs. Barberry she was really a conundrum, only to be solved on the theory of a perfectly preposterous delicacy.  There was so little that was preposterous in Miss Livingstone’s conduct as a rule that it is not quite fair to explain her attitude either by this exaggeration or by an equally hectic scruple about her right to take care of her guest, such a right dwindling curiously when it has been given in the highest to somebody else.  These pangs and penalties may have visited her in their proportion, but they did not take the importance of motives.  She rather stood aside with folded hands, and in an infinite terror of prejudicing fate, devoured her heart by way of keeping its beating normal.  Perhaps, too, she had a vision of a final alternative to Lindsay’s marriage, and one can imagine her forcing herself to look at it.