There was no anxiety in his voice; only gentle raillery.
"Not quite yet, General," replied Dr. Forsyth. "I want you to have a rest and sleep first. You are looking a bit tired; and your pulse"--he stopped to feel it--"is tired, too. So I've brought Nurse Paul to sit with you. She is a curiously soporific person. I shall be back before very long," he added, more to her than to the patient.
Left alone, Marrion went up to the bed, smoothed the rough pillows, straightened the coarse blanket, which was all the bedding Balaklava could produce, and said quietly--
"Now, if you will close your eyes I believe you would sleep."
But those sea-blue eyes--whose did they resemble?--someone she had seen somewhere--remained wide, and watched her narrowly as she returned to seat herself in the only chair. It was set full in the sunlight, which showed her tall, slender, yet strong in her dark stuff dress, a white handkerchief almost hiding her bright hair and pinned to place by the little brilliant brooch beneath her chin. Truly those keen eyes were over-watchful, and she was about again to suggest sleep when his voice, full of insistent command, startled her.
"He was a valet; but if you would only close your eyes I think you would go to sleep."
His eyes showed more awake than ever; there was a hint of a smile on the handsome old face.
Still there was silence for full five minutes, and Marrion was just about to make further suggestion of sleep when once more the voice rose--
"Will you please give me my snuff-box?--it is under my pillow somewhere."
She drew it out. A plain gold box with--her startled eyes caught the old face--
"Yes!" he said, and his voice had a jeer in it. "'P.P.,' as you see. That is my name. So you are Marrion Sim's child--and I suppose mine. Queer, isn't it, how these old stories crop up when one had almost forgotten them?" He scanned her face narrowly. "Now you are angry. Why should you be? Your mother was my wife, I suppose. At least, I hadn't any other then. I have sons now"--his voice softened as he spoke--"yes, sons to come after me when I am gone, as I shall be soon, for that gay doctor of yours can't conquer Fate; and it is Fate that has brought me here!"
He lay looking at her with a certain kindly curiosity, while she, startled out of herself, tried to realise that this was her father--the father she had condemned and despised all her life.