And Lucy, sitting up in bed, pushed her fair hair off her hot forehead. The whole thing seemed so unreal! Barbara Rebell was not free to care for anyone. Of course there were horrid women in the world who cared for other people than their own husbands, though Lucy had never met any of them, but she knew they existed. But those were the sort of women who rouged and were "fast"--not gentle, kindly souls like poor brave Mrs. Rebell.
General and Mrs. Kemp, paying a short visit to Anglo-Indian friends who had taken a house in the neighbourhood, little knew the physical and mental ordeal to which their absence had exposed their darling.
Three days had gone by since the fire. Doctor McKirdy was quite honest in telling Madame Sampiero that he was pleased and astonished at the progress Barbara had made, and yet the paralysed woman felt that her old friend was keeping something back.
"What is it?" she muttered. "You are not telling me everything, McKirdy!"
And so he spoke out: "When a human being has gone through such an experience as that of the other night, what we doctors have to fear, quite as much as the actual injury,--which in this case, as I tell you, is not so very bad, after all,--is shock." He paused, and his listener made him feel, in some subtle fashion, that she could have well spared this preamble. "Now, the surprising thing about Mrs. Rebell is that she is _not_ suffering from shock! Her mind is so full of something else, perhaps 'twould be more honest to say of someone else, that she has no thought to spare for that horrid experience of hers. She is concerned, very much so, about her appearance," the old Scotchman's eyes twinkled. "There she's as much the woman as any of them! But she has good nights--better nights, so she confesses, than she had before the fire. There she lies thinking, not of flames mind you, but of--well, you know of whom she's thinking! She's wondering if any of us have written and told Jamie of the affair; she's asking herself how he'll take it, whether he'll be hurrying back, whether, if he does come, she'll be informed of it. Then there's Boringdon's fashing himself to bits, wondering how long it will be before he is allowed to see her, trying to get news of her in devious ways, even coming to me when all else fails! Mrs. Kemp's lass is the only sensible one among 'em. I've been thinking of getting her to come and sit with Mrs. Rebell for a bit, 'twould just distract her mind----"