CHAPTER XII
Attendance upon the sick-room occupied Io's time for several days
thereafter. Morning and afternoon Banneker rode over from the station to
make anxious inquiry. The self-appointed nurse reported progress as
rapid as could be expected, but was constantly kept on the alert because
of the patient's rebellion against enforced idleness. Seizures of the
same sort she had suffered before, it appeared, but none hitherto so
severe. Nothing could be done, she told Io, beyond the administration of
the medicine, for which she had full directions. One day an attack would
finish it all; meantime, in spite of her power of self-repression, she
chafed at the monotony of her imprisonment.
In the late afternoon of the day after the collapse, while Io was
heating water at the fireplace, she heard a drawer open in the sick-room
and hurried back to find Miss Van Arsdale hanging to the dresser, her
face gray-splotched and her fingers convulsively crushing a letter which
she had taken from under lock. Alarmed and angry, the amateur nurse got
her back to bed only half conscious, but still cherishing her trove.
When, an hour later, she dared leave her charge, she heard the rustle of
smoothed-out paper and remained outside long enough to allow for the
reading.
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