Page:The Fate of Fenella (1892).djvu/293

 "Breakfast!" The man's words rang in his ears and he remembered that it was many hours since anything had passed his lips. But he thought no more of his growing weakness, and had himself driven to the rose-hung cottage where Fenella was waiting for him with outstretched hands.

How long the time seemed, and how misty and dim everything looked. The sun shone brilliantly, but there was a something pressing, as it were, upon his brain, a strange pain too at his heart, and that feeling of faintness which seemed to overcome him from time to time.

At last! The cottage where he had left her—his darling—yes, the only woman he had ever loved; and he sat up eager to spring out—to tell her that his mission had been faithfully performed. But he had to avail himself of the driver's arm and totter up to the door, his eyes wildly searching the window for Fenella's face.

Then once more, as in a dream, someone meeting him and a voice speaking: "The lady? No, sir, she left here in the bad weather, two days ago, by the boat."

Onslow heard no more, for a black cloud closed him in, and when he recovered consciousness he was looking in the pleasant face of the elderly little doctor who had attended his wife.

"That's better, my dear sir," he said. "You are suffering from exhaustion. That's right—no, no, you must drink this. You are not used to