As Horace North took the hand of Leo Salis in his, it was to find it
soft and cool and moist--very different from the burning palm he had so
often held a few months since. It was without a tremble, but it sent a
thrill through him; and with eyes flashing and revelling in his new joy,
he was about to speak, when she half threw herself back in her chair
with a movement of resignation which came upon him like a _douche_.
He knew it so well. He read it and understood it as plainly as if she
had spoken. It was the patient waiting for him to feel her pulse.
"I thought you had given me up," she said lightly.
"Given you up--you whom I love!"
Those were the words he wanted to say, but they would not come now after
the damping he had received, and involuntarily his fingers glided slowly
to her wrist, and he held them pressed against the calmly-beating pulse,
gazing down at her half-averted eyes the while.
There was no coquetry, no playful manner; she was as calm and resigned
as any patient he had ever visited, and yet, time back, she had clung to
him, gazed passionately into his eyes, and whispered of her love.
Was it delirium?
He could not bring himself to say; but even if it were, she must at
heart have loved him, and in her abnormal state have confessed what she
would sooner have died than said when well.
The moments glided by, and he still held her wrist in the most
professional manner, till, apparently surprised, she raised her
eyebrows, opened her languid eyes, and looked up at him.
"Well, doctor," she said, half laughing, "loth to part with your
patient? I am quite well."
He was dumb. A whirlwind of emotion was sweeping through him, as he
vainly sought to shape his course. Could he tell her of her passionate
avowal, or would it be too cowardly to take advantage of her past
weakness?
He could not recall that--not now. Some day, perhaps, he might; but now
he felt that he must approach her unarmed. She was delirious, and her
brain must be a blank to all that had passed, and he would speak
plainly--conventionally.
"Why, doctor," she said at last, half-wonderingly, "of what are you
thinking?"
"Thinking?" he said hoarsely.
"Yes; you look so serious. Surely I am not going to have a relapse?"
"Oh, no!" he cried.
"Then why do you look at me like this?"
She asked him the question so naively, as she half lay back in her
place, that a cold chill came upon him again, and, letting her hand
fall, he took a turn to the window and back, half ready to say nothing
then; but nerving himself once more, he took a chair, drew it to the
lounge, and, seating himself again, took her hand.
"Another inspection, doctor?" she said, half laughingly; and then, as
she met his eyes, she seemed to comprehend his meaning, and tried to
withdraw her hand, but he held it tightly.
"Do you know what I want to say to you?" he said gravely.
"What you wish to say?"
"Yes. There! I cannot speak to you in set terms, but do you think I
could know you as I have known, have watched by you, and tended you
through all this terrible illness, with any other result? Leo, I love
you! Will you be my wife?"
"Dr North!"
Yes; her mind must be a blank. There was so much genuine surprise in
her tone, such a look of astonishment in her eyes, that he knew it now
without doubt, and his emotion choked him for the moment, so great was
the disappointment and despair her tone evoked.
"You wonder at it, but why should you? Listen to me, Leo--"
"No, no; stop--stop! You are too hasty. Let me think."
She put her hands to her temples, and looked at him half-wonderingly,
half amusedly, but to him it seemed as if she were trying to recall
something, and he once more caught her hand.
"You will listen to me. You will give me your promise, Leo--dear Leo!
You seem to belong to me, for I have, as it were, brought you back from
the dead. Tell me you will be my wife."
She gave him a quick, keen glance that was as if full of horror and
revolt, but he could not interpret it, and drew her hand towards his
breast. Then, with a quick movement, and a pitying look at the man for
whom she felt something approaching gratitude:
"No, no," she exclaimed; "it is impossible."
"I have spoken hastily. I have taken you by surprise," he cried. "Only
tell me this: you do not hate me, Leo?"
"Hate you? Oh, no, Dr North," she cried. "Have we not always been
great friends? Have you not saved my life?"
"Let me be more than friend," he exclaimed; and a curious look came into
her eyes, as he went on pouring forth in almost incoherent terms his
love for her, the intense longing she had inspired. He could not
interpret it--that it was full of mockery and suppressed mirth, mingled
with contempt.
"You do not speak," he said, at last. "Give me some hope."
"What shall I say?" she cried. "It is too much to ask of me. You want
me to promise."
"Yes," he said; "and I will wait patiently for the fulfilment of that
promise."
"But I have thought so little of such a thing," she said calmly. "You
have taken me so by surprise. I cannot--oh, I cannot promise."
"But I may hope?" he said.
"I cannot--I will not--promise," she said firmly. "If I marry it must
be some one who has distinguished himself, who has made himself a name
among the great people of the world. I hate this humdrum life, and this
dull existence in the country. The man I loved should be one of whom
his fellow-men talked because he had become great and done something of
which I could be proud. No, no, Dr North; you must not ask me to
promise this."
He sat gazing into her eyes, for her words had struck a chord in his
breast. They seemed to rouse up in him the thoughts and theories which
had been set aside during the months of her illness while she had been
his only care; and with an eager burst of fervid passion in his tones,
he exclaimed:
"If I distinguished myself in some way--if I set men talking about my
discoveries, and made my name famous, would you listen to me then?"
The same mocking light was in her eye, the same half-contemptuous smile
played for a moment about the corners of her lips, as she said, in a low
voice:
"Wait and see."
"Wait? I will wait," he cried eagerly; "and you shall share my triumph.
Leo, you do not know, you cannot tell, what thoughts I have--what
investigations I am making into a science which is full of wonders
waiting to be discovered. You have roused once more in me the great
desire to win fame: to make researches that shall benefit humanity for
all time to come. I can, I will, win these secrets from Nature, and we
will together go hand-in-hand, learning more and more. I shall
succeed!" he cried excitedly. "Ah! you smile. You do give me hope."
She did not speak, but veiled her eyes, to hide the mocking light within
them.
"My darling--my love!" he exclaimed.
She drew back from his embrace.
"No, no," she said. "We are only friends."
"Yes, friends," he cried--"friends now."
"Say no more," she continued. "I am still weak, and this troubles me.
Pray go now."
"Yes, I am going," he said eagerly, "to fight a hard fight. I used to
think of it as for fame alone. Now it is for love--your love--the love
of the woman who first taught me that I had a heart."
Raising the hand she surrendered, he kissed it tenderly, and was about
to speak again, but he could not trust himself; and giving her a look
full of love, trust, and devotion, he hurried back to the study, where
Salis sat with Mary, waiting his return.
"Well?" said Salis, as Mary sat with pinched lips, and eyes wild with
emotion.
"Congratulate me, my dear boy!" cried North excitedly.
"She has promised to be your wife?"
"No, no; I am to wait and work. She is quite right. It was assumption
on my part."
"Then she has refused you?"
"Oh, no! She is quite right. She bids me do something to make me
worthy of her love, and--ah! Hartley, old fellow, I did not know what
life was before. There! I am the happiest fool on earth."
He turned to Mary, who was gazing at him with a look so full of pain
that it would have betrayed her secret at another time. But just then
the love madness was strong, and its effect sufficient to blind North,
who, in his joy, raised Mary's hand and kissed it, as he had kissed her
sister's.
Mary shrank at the contact of his lips with her soft, white hand; and a
look of despair that she could not control shot from her lustrous eyes.
North did not see it, but Hartley Salis made a mental note thereof as
the doctor exclaimed, laughing:
"There, good folks, let me go. Don't laugh at me and be too hard when I
am gone."
"Hard!" said the curate sadly.
"Well, I know I'm behaving like a lunatic. I'm going away to study
hard, and work myself back into a state of sanity--if I can."
He nodded and left the house; and, as the door closed, Mary closed her
eyes as the sank back helplessly in her place.
"Asleep, dear?" said Hartley tenderly, a few minutes later, and he had
risen from where he sat, with a dejected look upon his face.
"No, Hartley; only thinking," she said, smiling sweetly in his face.
"Thinking?"
"Of Leo."
"And so was I," he said sadly.
But Leo Salis was not thinking of brother or sister. She was writing
rapidly, with a blotting-book held half open, and the book she had been
reading held in the same hand, so that she could close the blotter
instantly and seem to be reading if any one came.