They were sorry they had let him come. A new night nurse was sent. Two doctors, now. And, either I dreamed it or, at the worse times, Eric was there as well. But always when I was myself, and the haunted night had given way to day, his face was gone. Yet his care was all about me. The doctors were friends of his; the nurses of his choosing.  
I cannot explain why, but ferreting out these facts gave me something less than the comfort they might be thought to bring. Why was he troubling about me? Why was he not spending every thought and every hour in trying to find Bettina?
 
Ranny had meant it well, telling me I had something to live for besides Betty, and giving that something a name. But it was an ill turn; a sword in my side for many a day and night. It gave me a ceaseless smart of anger against Eric. I was jealous, too, that it had been Ranny, and not Eric, who had been taking all these journeys.[Pg 342] Ranny had been working day and night. Ranny was the person we owed most to—Betty and I.
 
And was I to lie there, suffocated¹ by all this care, and leave a boy like Ranny (a boy I had expected so little of) to spend himself, soul and substance, for my sister?
 
How dared Eric think that he and I were going to be happy, while Ranny searched the capitals of Europe, and while Bettina....
 
One night, or early morning rather, stands out clear.
 
Vaguely² I remembered a renewed struggle, and a fresh defeat. Now, strangely, unaccountably, I had waked out of deep sleep with a feeling quite safe and sure, at last, that Betty was free.
 
The night-light had burned out. A pearly greyness filled the room.
 
The nurse was sitting by the window, wrapped in a shawl.
 
Her head, leaning against the window-frame, was thrown back as though to look at something.
 
I don't know whether it was the shawl drawn[Pg 343] about drooped³ shoulders, or the association of a lifted face by the window, but I thought of the hop-picker. And of the promise I had made. Yes, and kept.
 
As long as I had been at Duncombe after that haggard woman passed, no other with my knowing had gone hungry away.
 
Not all suffering, then, was

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