Abduction -- Fiction; Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Love stories
Turk was the general who planned the return to the castle. He
insisted that Quentin, who was very weak, take Miss Garrison upon
the horse's back and ride, while he and Savage walked. In this way
they reached the gates of Craneycrow. It was like the home-coming of
loved ones who had been absent for years. Three women were in tears,
and all of the men were in smiles. Quentin's was the smile of one
bordering on delirium, however. A chill broke over him, and the
fever in his body renewed its disputed sway. An hour later he was in
bed, and Turk, dispatched by Dorothy Garrison, was riding to the
nearest town for a physician, much against the wishes of the sick
man. He stubbornly insisted that he would start with her for
Brussels within twenty-four hours, and it was not until the doctor
told him that he was in extreme danger of pneumonia that he
consented to keep to his bed.
Resolutely he checked all desire to cry his love into the ear of the
gentle nurse who sat with him for hours. He would not grant himself
the slightest deviation from the course he had sworn to follow, and
he suffered more from restraint than from fever. She found herself
longing for the moment when he would call her to him and pour out
the love that would not be denied. He never spoke but she hoped for
signs of surrender; he never looked at her that she did not expect
his lips to utter the story his eyes were telling, What he endured
in that week of fever, under the strain of love's nursing, only he
could have told--and he told nothing. How she hungered for the
luxury of one word, only she knew--and confessed unconsciously.
Had the doctor told her that he was critically ill, she would have
cast all restraint aside and wrung from him the words he was holding
back. But the unromantic little doctor calmly broke the fever,
subdued the congestion, relieved the cough and told them that the
“young man would be quite well in a few days if he took good care of
himself.”
The days of convalescence were few, for the vigorous strength of the
patient had not been sapped to any great extent. They were days of
happiness, however, for all who lived in Castle Craneycrow. Dickey
and Lady Jane solemnly and somewhat defiantly approached Lord Bob on
a very important matter. He solemnly and discreetly gave his
consent, and Dickey promised to be very, very good to her so long as
he lived. One day a real priest, Father Bivot, came to the castle
gates to solicit alms for the poor of the neighborhood. He was
admitted, refreshed and made glad by a single donation that
surpassed in size the combined contributions of a whole valley. It
was from him that they learned, with no little uneasiness of mind,
that the body of Courant had been found, and that it had been
identified by the Luxemburg authorities. The cause of his death was
a mystery that defied solution, however.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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