In came a professional nurse.
She flung her arms round Walter's waist and just hung back with all her weight.

As she was heavy, though not corpulent, his more active strength became quite valueless; weight and position defeated him hopelessly; and at last he sank exhausted into the nurse's arms, and she and Grace carried him to bed like a child.
Of course, when it was all over, half a dozen people came to the rescue.
The woman told what had happened, the doctor administered a soothing draught, the patient became very quiet, then perspired a little, then went to sleep, and the cheerful doctor declared that he would be all the better for what he called this little outbreak.

But Grace sat there quivering for hours, and Colonel Clifford installed two new nurses that very evening.

They were pensioners of his--soldiers who had been invalided from wounds, but had long recovered, and were neither of them much above forty.

They had some experience, and proved admirable nurses--quiet, silent, vigilant as sentinels.
That burst of delirium was the climax.