In the meantime, at the old Manor House at Bourne, the good knight lay upon a bed of sickness: and in the close and heated room, watching the death-like countenance, bathing the burning brow with the essences used in those days, holding the refreshing cup to the parched lip, and smoothing the rough pillow of fever, day and night, sleepless, tearless, noiseless, sat Ida Mara, repaying with devotion unto death the first benefit that she had received at the hands of man. And he felt all her kindness; he would gaze in her face with almost the tenderness of a father, and, could he have shed tears, his eyes would often have filled, as he thought that, in a few short days, she might be lying in the same burning agony that he then felt, or that fair form might be blighted, and given up to the corruption of the grave, as the consequence of her efforts to save him. It was not alone that he saw she mingled skill with kindness--that with her own hands she made drinks for him which tasted grateful even to his parched tongue, that he seemed to obtain relief from many of the simples that she prepared, and that it was evident that she had learned not a little of the best part of the healing art while in the house of the Druggist--it was not this alone which made him willingly take all that she administered, and obey her lightest word, as if she were old and he were young; but it was that he would not give her an instant's pain or uneasiness in the course of her anxious attendance; and even in the delirium which at length came on, her voice would soothe him, her entreaties keep him tranquil, when no effect was produced by either those of his old servant Lakyn, or those of the good housekeeper Dame Cicely, who were the only persons that would venture to remain in the house as soon as it was discovered that the disease was really the plague. At first, when the poor Italian girl was left behind by Arabella, the housekeeper had shown some indignation at what she considered the intrusion of a stranger, and had ventured upon more than one, "Marry come up!" with the word "Minx!" muttered in a low tone, so that her good master could not hear it. A short conversation, however, with Matthew Lakyn a good deal mitigated her anger, and when she witnessed the anxious care of Ida Mara for the old knight, and saw her wipe the tears of apprehension from her eyes, when sometimes she quitted his chamber for an instant, she could not help saying to herself, "Well, thou art a good creature, and a devout. There are not many like thee in thy country, I'll warrant. Thou art almost as kind as if thou wert English bred and born."