Kilian stay away two nights
out of three, and of alienating Richard altogether. Richard went to town
on Monday morning after the accident occurred, and it was now Friday of
the following week, and he had not come back.

It was a little dull for Mary Leighton and for Henrietta, perhaps;
possibly for Charlotte Benson, but she did not seem to mind it much; and
I had never found R---- so enchanting as that fortnight. Charlotte
Benson liked to be Florence Nightingale in little, it was very plain;
and naturally nothing made me so happy as to be permitted to minister to
the wants of the (it must be confessed) frequently unreasonable
sufferer. For the first few days, while he was confined to his bed, of
course Charlotte and I were obliged to content ourselves with the
sending of messages, the arranging of bouquets, the concocting of soups
and jellies, and all the other coddling processes at our command. But
when Mr. Langenau was able to sit up, Sophie (at the instance of
Charlotte Benson, for she seemed to have renounced diplomacy herself,)
arranged that the bed should be taken away during the daytime, and
brought back again at night, and that Mr. Langenau should lie on the
sofa through the day. This made it possible for us to be in the room,
even without Sophie, though we began to think her presence necessary.
That scruple was soon done away with, for it laid too great a tax on
her, and restricted our attentions very much. The result was, we passed
nearly the whole day beside him; Mary Leighton and Henrietta very often
of the party, and Sophie occasionally looking in upon us. Sometimes when
Charlotte Benson, as ranking officer, decreed that the patient needed
rest, we took our books and work and went to the piazza, outside the
window of his room.

He would have been very tired of us, if he had not been very much in
love with one of us. As it was, it must have been a kind of fool's
paradise in which he lived, five pretty women fluttering about him,
offering the prettiest homage, and one of them the woman for whom,
wisely or foolishly, rightly or wrongly, he had conceived so violent
a passion.

As soon as he was out of pain and began to recover the tone of his
nerves at all, I saw that he wanted me beside him more than ever, and
that Charlotte Benson, with all her skill and cleverness, was as nothing
to him in comparison. No doubt he dissembled this with care; and was
very graceful and very grateful and infinitely interesting