t to have the
services of a trained man at this point, and to be housed in a big
establishment, where there were possibilities of moving from room to
room on the same floor, or even of being carried up and downstairs
without feeling oneself too intolerable a burden. There were always two
or three lazy fellows hanging about, who would be the better for using
their muscles. Peignton gave a little shudder of distaste at the
thought of the fluster which would have accompanied every movement, if
he had accepted Mrs Mallison's invitation to the Cottage. Teresa, dear
girl! had offered to nurse him, but the thing was not possible.
Convention would have forbidden her attending him in bed, and how the
deuce was he to get up with no one to help? He wondered between a laugh
and a groan, if Mrs Mallison would have offered motherly services! And
then he thought of Cassandra, standing slim and straight, the little
deer-like head turned over her shoulder, looking at him with questioning
eyes. What a picture she had made! Thinking of it conjured up other
pictures. He envisaged them one by one, as he lay in the darkness.
Cassandra on the day of Grizel Beverley's reception seated beside him in
the closed car, the softness of chinchilla beneath her chin; Cassandra
playing bridge, tapping the green baize with the long, lovely hand on
which the emerald flashed; Cassandra at the church decorations standing
with upraised arms against a background of leaves; Cassandra looking at
him down the length of her own dining-table, the bare slimness of her
throat rising above the bank of flowers. Each picture seemed more
beautiful, more appealing than the last. He wondered dreamily what it
was which formed this quality of appeal. Was it the touch of physical
fragility which underlaid her bloom, or a finer spiritual need which
called to a force within his own breast, a force which recognised the
call! Always in Cassandra's presence he had the consciousness of
waiting for an opportunity to serve; always he had the consciousness of
need. He told himself he would be a happier man if it were ever given
to him to be of service to Cassandra Raynor.

And then, with a real tenderness, he thought of his _fiancee_,--the
loving, kind-hearted woman-girl who was to be his wife. The mysterious
glamour of a Lady Cassandra was far removed from the practical common
sense of Teresa Mallison; but life was largely composed of the
commonplace, and he knew that