Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/119

Rh of the investigation of Dillon’s case; and meanwhile Amherst’s own purposes were momentarily lost in the sweet confusion of feeling her near him—of seeing the exquisite grain of her skin, the way her lashes grew out of a dusky line on the edge of the white lids, the way her hair, stealing in spirals of light from brow to ear, wavered off into a fruity down on the edge of the cheek.

At the hospital they were protestingly admitted by Mrs. Ogan, though the ofﬁcial “visitors’ hour” was not till the afternoon; and beside the sufferer’s bed, Amherst saw again that sudden ﬂowering of compassion which seemed the key to his companion’s beauty: as though her lips had been formed for consolation and her hands for tender ofﬁces. It was clear enough that Dillon, still sunk in a torpor broken by feverish tossings, was making no perceptible progress toward recovery; and Mrs. Ogan was reduced to murmuring some technical explanation about the state of the wound while Bessy hung above him with reassuring murmurs as to his wife’s fate, and promises that the children should be cared for.

Amherst had noticed, on entering, that a new nurse—a gaping young woman instantly lost in the study of Mrs. Westmore’s toilet—had replaced the dark-eyed attendant of the day before; and supposing that the latter was temporarily off duty, he asked Mrs. Ogan if she might be seen. [ 105 ]