“Oh, I shan’t be wanted now, shall I?” asked Carrie, with a timid voice and manner which contrasted strongly with her calm, easy assurance while she was at work.

Max threw a glance of gratitude at his sister, as he quickly opened the door of the carriage and more than half dragged Carrie out.

As the girl stepped, blinking, into the broad sunlight, Doreen stared at her intently, and then glanced inquiringly at her brother, who, however, did not see her questioning look.  He led Carrie into the house and straight up the stairs toward the room where they had put Dudley.

“Don’t make me stay,” pleaded she, in a low voice.  “They will know I’m not a regular nurse, and—­and I shall be uncomfortable, miserable.  You can do without me now.”

She was trying to shrink away.  Max stopped in the middle of the stairs, and answered her gravely, earnestly: 

“I only ask you to stay until we can get a regular nurse down.  He is too ill to do without a trained attendant; you know that.  Will you promise to wait while we send for one?”

Carrie could scarcely refuse.

“Yes, I will stay till then, if I am really wanted,” assented she.

“Ask my sister.  Here she comes,” said Max.

Doreen was on the stairs behind them.

“Is it really necessary—­do you want me to stay while a nurse is sent for?” asked Carrie, diffidently.

Doreen looked up straight in her face.

“What more natural than that you should stay with him?” returned she, promptly; “since you are his sister.”

Max and Carrie both started.  The likeness between Dudley and Carrie, which Max had taken time to discover, had struck Doreen at once.  Carrie would have denied the allegation, but Max caught her arm and stopped her.

“Quite true,” said he quietly.  “This is the way, Miss Horne, to your brother’s room.”

Doreen was quick enough to see that there was some little mystery about the relationship which she had divined, and she went rapidly past her brother without asking any questions.

It was about two hours after Dudley’s arrival that Carrie, now installed in the sick-room, came to the door and asked for Max.  Her face was rigid with a great terror.  She seemed at first unable to utter the words which were on her tongue.  At last she said, in a voice which sounded hard and unlike her own: 

“Don’t send for a nurse.  I must stay with him.  He is delirious, and I have just learned—­from him—­from his ravings, a secret—­a terrible secret—­one that must not be known!”

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE BLUE-EYED NURSE.

It was at the door of Dudley’s sick-room that Carrie informed Max that she had learned a secret from the lips of the sick man, and Max, by a natural impulse of curiosity, nay, more, a deep interest, pushed the door gently open.

Dudley’s voice could be heard muttering below his breath words which Max could not catch.