A plump, comfortable looking woman, in a nurse's uniform, bustled in; and beamed at me quite affectionately.
"Now, this is better! Yes, I said it would be so!" she exclaimed in German. "You feel quite yourself again, but weak,--yes, that is only to be expected--"
"Will you be so good as to tell me where I am?" I asked, as politely as I knew how; staring at her, and wondering if I'd ever seen her before.
"Oh, you men! No sooner do you find your tongue and your senses than you begin to ask questions! And yet you say it is women who are the talkers!" she answered, with a kind of ponderous archness. "You are at the Hotel Reichshof to be sure; and being well taken care of. The head?" she touched my forehead with her firm, cool fingers. "It hurts no more? Ah, it has healed beautifully; I did well to remove the strappings yesterday. There will be a scar, yes, but that cannot be helped. And now you are hungry? Ah, we will soon set that right! It is as I said, though even the doctor would not believe me. The wounds are nothing,--so to speak; the exhaustion was the mischief. You came through from Russia? What times they are having there! You were fortunate to get through at all. Yes, you are a very fortunate man, and an excellent patient; therefore you shall have some breakfast!"
She worried me, with her persistent cheerfulness, but it would have been ungracious to tell her so. She was right in one way, though. I was ravenously hungry; and when she returned, bringing a tray with delicious coffee and rolls, I started on them, and let her babble away, as she did,--nineteen to the dozen.
I gathered that nearly a week had passed since I got to Berlin. The hotel tout had captured me at the depot, and I collapsed as I got out of the cab.
"In the ordinary way, you would have been sent to a hospital, but when they saw the portrait--"
"What portrait?" I asked; but even as I spoke my memory was returning, and I knew she must mean the miniature Loris had given me.
"What portrait? Why, the Fraulein Pendennis, to be sure!"
"Fraulein Pendennis!" I gasped. "You know her?"
"I should do so, after nursing her through such an illness,--and so short a time since!"
"Why, here; not in this room, but in the hotel. It is three--no, nearer four months since; she also was taken ill on her way from Russia. There is a strange coincidence! But hers was a much more severe illness. We did not think she could possibly recover; and for weeks we feared for her brain. She had suffered some great shock; though the Herr, her father, would not say what it was--"