"You know him, or did. He says he owes you something, and--"
"What is his name?" she demanded, interrupting.
"I thought you'd ask that before. But you wished to place him for yourself, didn't you? And I'm afraid you'll have to. You see, when he volunteered it was on certain conditions; and that he was not to be known in the premises was one of them."
"But you've told me everything but his name."
"And I am never to be any the wiser?" she inquired. "That seems hardly fair. Since I can't pay him I certainly should be permitted to thank him."
"No. I wish to thank him myself, in person."
"I want him to come here--just as soon as I am fit to be seen."
"He'll come to-day, if you say so," he surprised her with.
"Oh, no, no, no. Not while I'm like this."
"But he's seen you worse than this, remember. He's been in this room a dozen--a score of times."
"Of course. While your eyes were bandaged. While the transfer was made."
"I fancy he didn't regard you as awful. He seemed--"
But she wouldn't let him go on. "Send him this evening," she commanded, "and I'll have the lights arranged so that I can see him while I myself am veiled by the kindly shadow."
When the surgeon was gone Nina fell to wondering once more. There were flirtations she had totally forgotten; there was no question about that. But she had always been rather a stickler for caste, and she couldn't at all reconcile the sheep-raising and the stone-quarrying with any of her lightly amorous adventures.
Perhaps, after all, she had been on the wrong track. Certainly she had been on the wrong track. This man owed her something, the perplexing Pottow had said, meaning evidently a debt of gratitude.
Then it couldn't be one of those. They were the last persons to think themselves in arrears of that kind. It must be some one she had befriended. She supposed she had befriended poor men on occasions, but she couldn't recall individual cases.
Possibly it was a coachman or gardener, or one of the tenantry at some place she had been years agone.
Or--why, to be sure!--some private from the ranks, who had completed his service, fallen heir to a little farm and a little quarry here in Somersetshire, and settled down to the prosaic life of a plodding civilian.