But if, as your father taught you, I had done it to HIM--" "Well, there's one thing, Joan--you'll do differently another time." "I can't be sure of that, for my very heart grows stupid, living here all alone." "Anyhow, you will have trouble enough with me for awhile, fast as your eyes can heal me," said Cosmo, who began to be aware of a reaction.
Lady Joan's face flushed with pleasure, but the next moment grew pale again at the thought of how little she could do for him.
"The first thing," she said, "is to write to your father.

When he knows I have got you, he won't be uneasy.

I will go and do it at once." Almost the moment she left him, Cosmo fell fast asleep again.
But now was Lady Joan, if not in perplexity, yet in no small discomfort.

It made her miserable to think of Cosmo in such a place, yet she could not help saying to herself it was well he had not written, for she must then have asked him not to come: now that he was in the house, she dared not tell her brother; and were she to move him to any comfortable room in the castle, he would be sure to hear of it from the butler, for the less faith carried, the more favour curried! One thing only was in her power: she could make the room he was in comparatively comfortable.

As soon, therefore, as she had written a hurried letter to the laird, she went hastily through some of the rooms nearest the part in which Cosmo lay, making choice of this and of that for her purpose: in the great, all but uninhabited place there were naturally many available pieces of stuff and of furniture.