An Apache Princess (Illustrated Edition). Charles KingЧитать онлайн книгу.
need my maid, Dr. Graham, and I told Major Plume distinctly I did not need you," was the impulsive reply, as the lady strove against the calm, masterful grasp he laid on her wrist.
"That's as may be, Mrs. Plume. We're often blind to our best interests. Be seated a moment, then I'll let you tramp the soles of your feet off, if you so desire." And so he practically pulled her into a chair; Elise, glaring the while, stood spitefully looking on. The antipathy was mutual.
"You've slept too little of late, Mrs. Plume," continued the doctor, lucklessly hitting the mark with a home shot instantly resented, for the lady was on her feet again.
"Sleep! People do nothing but sleep in this woebegone hole!" she cried. "I've had sleep enough to last a lifetime. What I want is to wake—wake out of this horrible nightmare! Dr. Graham, you are a friend of Captain Wren's. What under heaven possessed him, with his brutal strength, to assault so sick a man as Mr. Blakely? What possible pretext could he assert?" And again she was straining at her imprisoned hand and seeking to free herself, Graham calmly studying her the while, as he noted the feverish pulse. Not half an hour earlier he had been standing beside the sick bed of a fair young girl, one sorely weighted now with grave anxieties, yet who lay patient and uncomplaining, rarely speaking a word. They had not told the half of the web of accusation that now enmeshed her father's feet, but what had been revealed to her was more than enough to banish every thought of self or suffering and to fill her fond heart with instant and loving care for him. No one, not even Janet, was present during the interview between father and child that followed. Graham found him later locked in his own room, reluctant to admit even him, and lingering long before he opened the door; but even then the tear-stains stood on his furrowed face, and the doctor knew he had been sobbing his great heart out over the picture of his child—the child he had so harshly judged and sentenced, all unheard. Graham had gone to him, after seeing Angela, with censure on his tongue, but he never spoke the words. He saw there was no longer need.
"Let the lassie lie still the day," said he, "with Kate, perhaps, to read to her. Your sister might not choose a cheering book. Then perhaps we'll have her riding Punch again to-morrow." But Graham did not smile when meeting Janet by the parlor door.
He was thinking of the contrast in these two, his patients, as with professional calm he studied the troubled features of the major's wife when the voice of Sergeant Shannon was heard in the lower hall, inquiring for the major, and in an instant Plume had joined him. In that instant, too, Elise had sped, cat-like, to the door, and Mrs. Plume had followed. Possibly for this reason the major led the sergeant forth upon the piazza and the conversation took place in tones inaudible to those within the house; but, in less than a minute, the doctor's name was called and Graham went down.
"Look at this," said Plume. "They raked it out of the sand close to where Mullins was lying." And the major held forth an object that gleamed in the last rays of the slanting sunshine. It was Blakely's beautiful watch.
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