In a couple of hours we had improvised a rough, woven-grass hammock as an ambulance couch, had engaged our bearers, and had got Sebastian under way for the camp by the river.

When I arrived at our tents, I found Hilda had prepared everything for our patient with her usual cleverness.  Not only had she got a bed ready for Sebastian, who was now almost insensible, but she had even cooked some arrowroot from our stores beforehand, so that he might have a little food, with a dash of brandy in it, to recover him after the fatigue of the journey down the mountain.  By the time we had laid him out on a mattress in a cool tent, with the fresh air blowing about him, and had made him eat the meal prepared for him, he really began to look comparatively comfortable.

Lady Meadowcroft was now our chief trouble.  We did not dare to tell her it was really plague; but she had got near enough back to civilisation to have recovered her faculty for profuse grumbling; and the idea of the delay that Sebastian would cause us drove her wild with annoyance.  “Only two days off from Ivor,” she cried, “and that comfortable bungalow!  And now to think we must stop here in the woods a week or ten days for this horrid old Professor!  Why can’t he get worse at once and die like a gentleman?  But, there! with you to nurse him, Hilda, he’ll never get worse.  He couldn’t die if he tried.  He’ll linger on and on for weeks and weeks through a beastly convalescence!”

“Hubert,” Hilda said to me, when we were alone once more; “we mustn’t keep her here.  She will be a hindrance, not a help.  One way or another we must manage to get rid of her.”

“How can we?” I asked.  “We can’t turn her loose upon the mountain roads with a Nepaulese escort.  She isn’t fit for it.  She would be frantic with terror.”

“I’ve thought of that, and I see only one thing possible.  I must go on with her myself as fast as we can push to Sir Ivor’s place, and then return to help you nurse the Professor.”

I saw she was right.  It was the sole plan open to us.  And I had no fear of letting Hilda go off alone with Lady Meadowcroft and the bearers.  She was a host in herself, and could manage a party of native servants at least as well as I could.

So Hilda went, and came back again.  Meanwhile, I took charge of the nursing of Sebastian.  Fortunately, I had brought with me a good stock of jungle-medicines in my little travelling-case, including plenty of quinine; and under my careful treatment the Professor passed the crisis and began to mend slowly.  The first question he asked me when he felt himself able to talk once more was, “Nurse Wade—­what has become of her?”—­for he had not yet seen her.  I feared the shock for him.

“She is here with me,” I answered, in a very measured voice.  “She is waiting to be allowed to come and help me in taking care of you.”

He shuddered and turned away.  His face buried itself in the pillow.  I could see some twinge of remorse had seized upon him.  At last he spoke.  “Cumberledge,” he said, in a very low and almost frightened tone, “don’t let her come near me!  I can’t bear it.  I can’t bear it.”