"Had an awful night. Couldn’t sleep a wink. I won’t get up just yet. Order me tea instead of coffee. We’ll go out after lunch, not before."
"Do you think you ought to go out, dearest?"
"Of course I ought to go out," he snapped peevishly.
"Oh, well, if it’s raining I dare say I shan’t want to go out." He placed his hand nervously on his right breast.
She kissed him again. Then he gazed at her with love, as she moved over him to ring the bell.
"Oh, splendid! I listened once or twice at the door, but as I didn’t hear anything I made sure you were asleep."
She kept silence about her awful, persistent fear, knowing that any reference to it would only irritate him. He was more than ever like a child--and a captious child. She realized the attitude of his sister towards him. Thank God he was better! If he had fallen ill she would have condemned herself as a criminal for life, for her insane, selfish suggestion of an excursion to the hills at night. Not he, but she, was the child.
After his tea he did get up and dress; but he would not descend to lunch; nor eat in the bedroom. At three o’clock he said that when it rained on the Riviera the climate was the most damnable on earth, and that he preferred to be in bed. And to bed he returned. Then Lilian noticed him fingering his breast again.
"Oh! Nothing. Nothing. Only a sort of sensation."
Soon afterwards he gave a few very faint, short, dry coughs--scarcely perceptible efforts to clear the throat. And at the same Lilian went cold. She knew that cough. She had helped to nurse her father. It was the affrighting pneumonia cough. Almost simultaneously it occurred to her that Felix was trying to hide from her a difficulty in breathing. She had not dreamed of anything so bad as pneumonia, which for her was the direst of all diseases. And she with a plan for dyeing her skin to amuse and excite him! ... She had thought of a severe chill at the worst.
She hurried downstairs to see the concierge. The lift was too slow in coming up for her; she had to run down the flights of carpeted steps one after another. The main question on her mind was: "Ought I to telegraph to his sister?" If Miss Grig arrived, what would, what could happen to herself? The concierge--a dark, haughty, long-moustached, somewhat consumptive subject--adored Lilian for her beauty, and she had rewarded his worship with exquisite smiles and tones.