Page:Elizabeth Jordan--Tales of the cloister.djvu/54

 when she turned her cold glance upon him; but her fascination still held and his allegiance to her did not waver.

Then one night he fell ill.

He had not been wholly well for several days. His red cheeks were more flushed than usual, and the hand that lay so confidingly on the faces of his friends was dry and feverish. Unskilled in the meaning of these infantile symptoms, the nuns were still sufficiently alarmed to fill him with simple remedies they used for colds, and to keep him more closely than ever in his play-room. Once each day he was bundled up like an Indian papoose and taken for a turn around the garden walks, but that was all, and when the outing was over they toasted him before the fire until he was warmed through. Notwithstanding these attentions, he continued feverish, and showed an unusual langour and drowsiness. When, added to these symptoms, he developed another, which in any one but Frederick Addison would have been rated irritability, the awe-struck and anxious Mother Superior directed Sister Rodriguez, the convent infirmarian, to take him in hand, watch him carefully and restore him to his usual condition of robust health.

It was a congenial duty, and Sister Rodriguez entered upon it with much zeal. For