Page:Ethel Churchill 3.pdf/288

286 once so precious; the haunted midnights, when he had been accustomed to drink it. "How have you slept?" said she. Walter smiled faintly, but his reply was interrupted by coughing; he signed to the window, which she opened, and then turned hastily away, for she could not bear the sight of the churchyard below. Maynard was now in the same house where he had come by chance on his first arrival in London; he was now occupying the room above the very one where he then slept. Remembering it as a cheap, out-of-the-way place, he had come thither the day after the duel to die, uncared for and unknown. But Lavinia had found him out; and, for weeks, had been his devoted nurse, though even she was startled at the extreme destitution of their situation; but, for his sake only, not for her own. "Oh, Walter!" exclaimed she, after a long silence, during which she had either watched his difficult breathing, or turned aside to dash away the tears that, in spite of herself, would fill her eyes. There is an awe about