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I was glad to send the old woman with them, for as we turned away to our own carriage, I said in my mind, “All that little lady needs is enough contrition, and she’ll give away the total of any secret of which she owns an undivided half.”

But a night and a day passed, and a second, and a third, and I perceived she had told nothing.

It was a terrible time, with many occasions of suspense more harrowing than that. Our other children were getting on, yet still needed vigilant care; the Baron was to be let out of his room in a day or two, but my fat neighbor had come down with the disease, while his wife still lay between life and death–how they finally got well, I have never quite made out, they were so badly nursed–and all about us were new cases, and cases beyond hope, and retarded recoveries, and relapses, and funerals, and nurses too few, and ice scarce, and everybody worn out with watching– physicians compelled to limit themselves to just so many cases at a time, to avoid utterly breaking down.

As I was in my fat neighbor’s sick chamber one evening, giving his nurse a respite, word came that Fontenette was at my gate. I went to him with misgivings that only increased as we greeted. He was dejected and agitated. His grasp was damp and cold.

“It cou’n’ stay from me always,” he said in an anguished voice, and I cried in my soul, “She’s told him!”

But she had not. I asked him what his bad news was that had come at last, but his only reply was,

“Can you take him? Can you take him out of my house–to-night–this evening–now?”

“Who, the Baron? Why, certainly, if you desire it?” I responded; wondering if the entomologist, by some slip, had betrayed her. There was an awe in my visitor’s eyes that was almost fright.

“Fontenette,” I exclaimed, “what have you heard–what have you done?”

“My frien’, ’tis not what I ‘ave heard, neitheh what I ‘ave done; ’tis what I ‘ave got.”

“Got? Why, you’ve got nothing, you Creole of the Creoles. Your skin’s as cool as mine.”

“Feel my pulse,” he said. I felt it. It wasn’t less than a hundred and fifty.

“Go, get into bed while I bring the Baron over here,” I said, and by the time I had done this and got back to him his skin was hot enough! An hour or two after, I recrossed the street on the way to my night’s rest, leaving his wife to nurse him, and Senda to attend on her and keep house. I paused in the garden and gazed up among the benignant stars. And then I looked onward, through and beyond their ranks, seemingly so confused, yet where such amazing hidden order is, and said, for our good Fontenette, and for his watching wife, and for all of us–even for my wife and me in our unutterable loss–“Sank Kott! sank Kott! it iss only se yellow fevah!”

XVI

Three days more. In the third evening I found the doctor saying to Mrs. Fontenette:

“Nine o’clock. It’s now seven-thirty. Well, you’d better begin pretty soon to watch for the change.

“O, you’ll know it when you see it, it will be as plain as something sinking in water right before your eyes. Then give him the beef-tea, just a teaspoonful; then, by and by, another, and another, as I told you, always keeping his head on the pillow–mind that.”

Out beside his carriage he continued to me: “O yes, a nurse or patient may break that rule, or almost any rule, and the patient may live. I had a patient, left alone for a moment on the climacteric day, who was found standing at her mirror combing her hair, and to-day she’s as well as you or I. I had another who got out of bed, walked down a corridor, fell face downward and lay insensible at the crack of a doorsill with the rain blowing in on him under the door–and he got well. As to Fontenette, all his symptoms so far are good. Well–I’ll be back in the morning.”