I lighted a match, which with a candle I found on a chair.
'Your father is no doubt sound asleep,' I said; 'you will scarcely
awake him to-night?'
'Oh dear, no,' said Winifred. 'Good-night. You look quite ill. Ever
since you lifted up your head from my breast, when you were thinking
so hard, you have looked quite ill.'
Suddenly I remembered that I must be up and on the sands betimes in
the morning, to see whether the tide had washed away the fallen earth
so as to expose Wynne's body. To prevent Winifred from seeing the
stolen cross was now the one important thing in the world.
I bade her good-night and walked towards home.
XI
She was right: those few minutes of concentrated agony had in truth
made me ill. My wet clothes clinging round my body began to chill me
now, and as I crept into the house and upstairs to my room, my teeth
were chattering like castanets.
As I threw off my wet clothes and turned into bed, I was partially
forewarned by the throbbing at my temples, the rolling fire at the
back of my eyeballs, the thirst in my parched throat, that some kind
of illness, some kind of fever, was upon me.
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