"Quite true," said he quietly. "This is the way, Miss Horne, to your brother's room."
Doreen was quick enough to see that there was some little mystery about the relationship which she had divined, and she went rapidly past her brother without asking any questions.
It was about two hours after Dudley's arrival that Carrie, now installed in the sick-room, came to the door and asked for Max. Her face was rigid with a great terror. She seemed at first unable to utter the words which were on her tongue. At last she said, in a voice which sounded hard and unlike her own:
"Don't send for a nurse. I must stay with him. He is delirious, and I have just learned--from him--from his ravings, a secret--a terrible secret--one that must not be known!"
It was at the door of Dudley's sick-room that Carrie informed Max that she had learned a secret from the lips of the sick man, and Max, by a natural impulse of curiosity, nay, more, a deep interest, pushed the door gently open.
Dudley's voice could be heard muttering below his breath words which Max could not catch.
But Carrie pulled the young man sharply back by the arm into the corridor, and shut the door behind her. Her face was full of determination.
"I should think you might trust me," he said, stiffly. "The doctor will have to hear when he comes. And the secret, whatever it is, will be safer with me than with old Haselden."
Carrie smiled a little, and shook her head.
"The doctor," said she, "wouldn't be able to make head or tail of what he says. Now, you would."
"And if I did, what of that? Don't I know everything, or almost everything, already? Didn't I bring him down here, to my father's house, after I knew that there was a warrant out against him? What better proof do you want that the secret would be safe with me?"
But Carrie would not give way. Without entering into an argument, she stood before him with a set look of obstinacy in her mouth and eyes, slowly shaking her head once or twice as he went on with his persuasions.
"Do you think I should make a wrong use of the secret?" asked Max, impatiently.
"Do you think it would turn me against him?"
"It is something that has given you pain?" Max went on, noting the traces of tears on her face and the misery in her eyes.