He would have married me if I had not
gone away to save him from it. I could keep my love for him a
secret while he was well; I could stifle it, and crush it down,
and wither it up by absence. But now he is ill, it gets beyond
me; I can't master it. Oh, Marta! don't break my heart by denying
me! I have suffered so much for his sake, that I have earned the
right to nurse him!"
Marta was not proof against this last appeal. She had one great
and rare merit for a middle-aged woman--she had not forgotten her
own youth.
"Come, child," said she, soothingly; "I won't attempt to deny
you. Dry your eyes, put on your mantilla; and, when we get face
to face with the doctor, try to look as old and ugly as you can,
if you want to be let into the sick-room along with me."
The ordeal of medical scrutiny was passed more easily than Marta
Angrisani had anticipated. It was of great importance, in the
doctor's opinion, that the sick man should see familiar faces at
his bedside. Nanina had only, therefore, to state that he knew
her well, and that she had sat to him as a model in the days when
he was learning the art of sculpture, to be immediately accepted
as Marta's privileged assistant in the sick-room.
The worst apprehensions felt by the doctor for the patient were
soon realized. The fever flew to his brain. For nearly six weeks
he lay prostrate, at the mercy of death; now raging with the wild
strength of delirium, and now sunk in the speechless, motionless,
sleepless exhaustion which was his only repose.
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