“I will send you all his things, except—­except anything that might help my poor girl.”

She turned quickly.

“And so it’s ended like this!  Major Winton, is there anything behind—­were they really happy?”

Winton looked straight at her and answered: 

“Ah, too happy!”

Without a quiver, he met those tear-darkened, dilated eyes straining at his; with a heavy sigh, she once more turned away, and, brushing her handkerchief across her face, drew down her veil.

It was not true—­he knew from the mutterings of Gyp’s fever—­but no one, not even Summerhay’s mother, should hear a whisper if he could help it.  At the door, he murmured: 

“I don’t know whether my girl will get through, or what she will do after.  When Fate hits, she hits too hard.  And you!  Good-bye.”

Lady Summerhay pressed his outstretched hand.

“Good-bye,” she said, in a strangled voice.  “I wish you—­good-bye.”  Then, turning abruptly, she hastened away.

Winton went back to his guardianship upstairs.

In the days that followed, when Gyp, robbed of memory, hung between life and death, Winton hardly left her room, that low room with creepered windows whence the river could be seen, gliding down under the pale November sunshine or black beneath the stars.  He would watch it, fascinated, as one sometimes watches the relentless sea.  He had snatched her as by a miracle from that snaky river.

He had refused to have a nurse.  Aunt Rosamund and Mrs. Markey were skilled in sickness, and he could not bear that a strange person should listen to those delirious mutterings.  His own part of the nursing was just to sit there and keep her secrets from the others—­if he could.  And he grudged every minute away from his post.  He would stay for hours, with eyes fixed on her face.  No one could supply so well as he just that coherent thread of the familiar, by which the fevered, without knowing it, perhaps find their way a little in the dark mazes where they wander.  And he would think of her as she used to be—­well and happy—­adopting unconsciously the methods of those mental and other scientists whom he looked upon as quacks.

He was astonished by the number of inquiries, even people whom he had considered enemies left cards or sent their servants, forcing him to the conclusion that people of position are obliged to reserve their human kindness for those as good as dead.  But the small folk touched him daily by their genuine concern for her whose grace and softness had won their hearts.  One morning he received a letter forwarded from Bury Street.

“Dear major Winton,

“I have read a paragraph in the paper about poor Mr. Summerhay’s death.  And, oh, I feel so sorry for her!  She was so good to me; I do feel it most dreadfully.  If you think she would like to know how we all feel for her, you would tell her, wouldn’t you?  I do think it’s cruel.