Page:Once a Week Volume 8.djvu/113

. 17, 1863.] terror; to deceive her in that awful hour by telling her she was not, went against every feeling of his heart.

“But I don’t want to die,” she urged, in some excitement, interpreting his silence to mean the worst. “Can’t Jan do anything for me? Can’t Dr. Hayes?”

“Dr. Hayes will be here soon,” observed Lionel, soothingly, if somewhat evasively. “He will come by the next train.”

She took his hand, held it between hers, and looked beseechingly up to his face. “I don’t want to leave you,” she whispered. “Oh Lionel! keep me here if you can! You know you are always kind to me. Sometimes I have reproached you that you were not, but it was not true. You have been ever kind, have you not?”

“I have ever striven to be so,” he answered, the tears glistening on his eyelashes.

“I don’t want to die. I want to get well and go about again, like I used to do when at Verner’s Pride. Now Sir Edmund Hautley is come home, that will be a good place to visit at. Lionel, I don’t want to die! Can’t you keep me in life?”

“If by sacrificing my own life I could save yours, Heaven knows how willingly I would do it,” he tenderly answered.

“Why should I die? Why should I die, more than others? I don’t think I am dying, Lionel,” she added, after a pause. “I shall get well yet.”

She stretched out her hand for some cooling drink that was near, and Lionel gave her a teaspoonful. He was giving her another, but she jerked her head away and spilled it.

“It’s not nice,” she said. So he put it down.

“I want to see Deborah,” she resumed.

“My dear, they are at Heartburg. I told you so this morning. They will be home no doubt by the next train. Jan has sent to them.”

“What should they do at Heartburg?” she fractiously asked.

“They went over yesterday to remain until to-day, I hear.”

Subsiding into silence, she lay quite still, save for her panting breath, holding Lionel’s hand as he bent over her. Some noise in the corridor outside attracted her attention, and she signed to him to open the door.

“Perhaps it is Dr. Hayes,” she murmured. “He is better than Jan.”

Better than Jan, insomuch as that he was rather given to assure his patients they would soon be strong enough to enjoy the al fresco delights of a gipsy party, even though he knew that they had not an hour’s prolonged life left in them. Not so Jan. Never did a more cheering doctor enter a sick-room than Jan, so long as there was the faintest shade of hope. But, when the closing scene was actually come, the spirit all but upon the wing, then Jan whispered of hope no more. He could not do it in his pure sincerity. Jan could be silent; but Jan could not tell a man, whose soul was hovering on the entrance of the next world, that he might yet recreate himself dancing hornpipes in this. Dr. Hayes would; it was in his creed to do so; and in that respect Dr. Hayes was different from Jan.

It was not Dr. Hayes. As Lionel opened the door, Lucy was passing it, and Thérèse was at the end of the corridor talking to Lady Verner. Lucy stopped to make her kind inquiries, her tone a low one, of how the invalid was then.

“Whose voice is that?” called out Mrs. Verner, her words scarcely reaching her husband’s ears.

“It is Lucy Tempest’s,” he said, closing the door and returning to her. “She was asking after you.”

“Tell her to come in.”

Lionel opened the door again, and beckoned to Lucy.

“Mrs. Verner is asking if you will come in and see her,” he said as she approached.

All the old grievances, the insults of Sibylla, blotted out from her gentle and forgiving mind, lost sight of in this great crisis, Lucy went up to the couch, and stood by the side of Sibylla. Lionel leaned over its back.

“I trust you are not feeling very ill, Mrs. Verner,” she said in a low, sweet tone, as she bent towards her and touched her hand. Touched it only; let her own fall lightly upon it; as if she did not feel sufficiently sure of Sibylla’s humour to presume to take it.

“No, I don’t think I’m better. I am so weak here.”

She touched her chest as she spoke. Lucy, perhaps somewhat at a loss what to say, stood in silence.

“I have been very cross to you sometimes, Lucy,” she resumed. “I meant nothing. I used to feel vexed with everybody, and said foolish things without meaning it. It was so cruel to be turned from Verner’s Pride, and it made me unhappy.”

“Indeed I do not think anything about it,” replied Lucy, the tears rising to her eyes in her forgiving tenderness. “I know how ill you must have felt. I used to feel that I should like to help you to bear the pain and the sorrow.”

Sibylla lay panting. Lucy remained as she was; Lionel also. Presently she, Sibylla, glanced at Lucy.

“I wish you’d kiss me.”

Lucy, unnerved by the words, bent closer to her, a shower of tears falling from her eyes on Sibylla’s face.

“If I could but save her life for you!” she murmured to Lionel, glancing up at him through her eyes as she rose from the embrace, and she saw that Lionel’s eyes were as wet as hers.

And now there was a commotion outside. Sounds, as of talking and wailing and crying, were heard. Little need to tell Lionel that they came from the Miss Wests: he recognised the voices; and Lucy glided forward to open the door.

Poor ladies! They were wont to say ever after that their absence had happened on purpose. Mortified at being ignored in Miss Hautley’s invitations, they had made a little plan to get out of Deerham. An old friend in Heartburg had repeatedly pressed them to dine there and remain for the night, and they determined to avail themselves of the invitation this very day of the fête at Deerham Hall. It would be pleasant to have to