The Colonel paced up and down, his hands behind him. The white duck was becoming; he did not look sixty. Hair, mustache, and imperial were quite grey; except for that he had never aged to Hagar's eyes. His body had the same height and swing, the same fine spareness; his voice kept the same rich inflections, all the way from mellow and golden to the most corroding acid; he dominated, just as she remembered him in her childhood. Not all of his two weeks in Egypt had been spent by Medway's bedside; he had been fairly over Alexandria, and to Meks and Ramleh, and even afield to Abûkir and Rosetta. He had offered to take her with him upon these later excursions, but she had refused. The brother of her father's wife was going with him, and she correctly thought that they would be freer without her. The Colonel acquiesced. "I dare say you'll have chances enough to see things, Gipsy." It was her first intimation that any one had in mind her staying....
Now the Colonel, after pacing awhile, spoke reflectively. "At this rate it won't be long before he's really well enough to talk. I'll have to have several talks with him. Did you gather, Gipsy, that Thomson had told him that he would remain crippled?"
"I do not think he told him that, grandfather."
"That's going to be the shock," said the Colonel. "Well, he'll have to be told! I think Thomson--or the doctor--had better do it. And then he'll have to learn about that will. Altogether, it may delay his convalescence a little. Of course, I'll stay until he's practically recovered--as far as he can recover."
"Do you think that ... perhaps ... he might like to go home--to go home to Gilead Balm?"
"Not," answered the Colonel, "if I know Medway, and I think I do! To come back, crippled, after all these primrose years--to sleep in his old room, and Maria's--to sit on the porch and listen to Bob and Serena--No!"
That night in her own room Hagar placed two candles on the table, took a sheet of paper and a pencil, and sitting down, made a calculation. The night was warm to oppression; through the windows came the indefinite, hot, thick murmur of the evening city. Hagar sat with bare arms and throat and loosened hair. She wrote her name, _Hagar Ashendyne_, and her age, and then, an inch below, a little table,--