They might see him now, but they must be warned that he wandered at times a little; and, if he might suggest, if it was anything of family importance, they had better make the most of their time and his lucid intervals.

Perhaps if they were old friends--VERY old friends--he would recognize them.

He was wandering much in the past--always in the past.
They found him in the end of the ward, but so carefully protected and partitioned off by screens that the space around his cot had all the privacy and security of an apartment.

He was very much changed; they would scarcely have known him, but for the delicately curved aquiline profile and the long white moustache--now so faint and etherealized as to seem a mere spirit wing that rested on his pillow.

To their surprise he opened his eyes with a smile of perfect recognition, and, with thin fingers beyond the coverlid, beckoned to them to approach.
Yet there was still a shadow of his old reserve in his reception of Paul, and, although one hand interlocked the fingers of Yerba--who had at first rushed impulsively forward and fallen on her knees beside the bed--and the other softly placed itself upon her head, his eyes were fixed upon the young man's with the ceremoniousness due to a stranger.
"I am glad to see, sir," he began in a slow, broken, but perfectly audible voice, "that now you are--satisfied with the right--of this young lady--to bear the name of--Arguello--and her relationship--sir--to one of the oldest"-- "But, my dear old friend," broke out Paul, earnestly, "I NEVER cared for that--I beg you to believe"-- "He never--never--cared for it--dear, dear colonel," sobbed Yerba, passionately: "it was all my fault--he thought only of me--you wrong him!" "I think otherwise," said the colonel, with grim and relentless deliberation.