Nurse for the Doctor by Averil Ives

only effect his words had on her was rather extraordinary. She saw him greeting Dona Maria after a lapse of ten years, and looking quite thrilled by the meeting—and she saw Dona Maria bending over him and lighting his cigarette, generally fussing over him in a way he plainly found pleasant, since he submitted to it meekly. And she remembered herself dining alone on that first night. Not that that had really upset her in the least, but Michael had hardly noticed her absence from the dinner table. Of that she felt quite sure. And she remembered the concerned look on his face after he kissed her—his blaming it on “Spanish moonlight.” And the oddest thing of all was that it didn’t matter ... She even felt a little repelled because he had referred to that night.
    She turned away swiftly.
    “I’ll leave you now,” she said. “You ought to have a little rest before you start to dress. And when you want me I’ll be somewhere quite handy.”
    “But possibly not quite handy enough,” he remarked, a little obscurely, a piqued look about the corners of his shapely mouth as he surveyed her. “Josie, have I said anything to annoy you?”
    “No, of course not.”
    “Well, whatever you do don’t start wearing your uniform again. I was only joking about your Spanish admirers, and—I like you as you are, Josie!”
    “Thank you,” she returned, with little or no enthusiasm in her voice. And as she made her way to her own room the conversation that had just ended slipped completely from her mind as she became preoccupied with wondering what it would be like to ride pillion on a spirited horse like Ramirez, with Carlos de Palheiro up in front of her in the saddle.
    But she had no opportunity to find out during the next few days. The marquis, as Michael had truthfully stated, was an attentive host, and in addition to the Duveens there was Miss Sylvia Petersen to be kept entertained. And she seemed to require a lot of entertainment—especially from him. She sent him looks from her striking, blue-green eyes that told everybody else a good deal, whether or not they conveyed the same message to the marquis himself. It was possible—indeed, highly probable—that he was accustomed to receiving looks of that type from women who had brought to a fine art the business of transmitting such messages from underneath drooping eyelids, and Josie decided that he must by this time have learned the language of languishing glances.
    He was such a very attractive man, with a background of wealth and high position. And in addition he had a certain tenderness in his dealings with women— all women, she noticed, whether it was such an obviously arch and anxious-to-please, no longer young women like Mrs. Duveen, a far more elderly woman like his Aunt Amelie, or someone young and glamorous like the lovely American girl—and she put it down to the fact that he was a Spaniard, and Spaniards of good birth do have this tendency towards the supposedly frailer sex.
    Therefore it was a little difficult to tell whether his attitude to Miss Petersen was merely the result of his early training, combined with the natural gallantry of his instincts. But he did seem to behave towards her with rather excessive courtliness at times, and whenever he looked at her his eyes reflected a good deal of admiration. There was the connoisseur’s appreciation for something that was well-nigh perfect—at any rate, so far as the eye could detect—and a gentleness in the handling of that perfect thing because any other sort of treatment might prove disastrous to it. And occasionally—or so Josie had decided, as the result of discreet observation—there was a warmer flash in those lustrous dark eyes when Sylvia made a little impulsive gesture and slipped a rounded arm inside his own, or when she appealed to him to do something for her, or discovered a helplessness within herself that reached out and plucked at the protective side of his nature.
    And having almost