"JOIN YOUR SHIP AT ONCE."
The morning broke warm and bright, but the gloom within the fine old
manor-house deepened as the facts became more and more impressed on all
these that the master would, if his life were spared, never again be the
same.
Isabel came softly into the room twice during the night, so silently
that Neil, as he sat watching, did not hear her till she touched his
arm. She stayed with him for a time, and as they sat together in those
solemn hours brother and sister seemed to be drawn more together than
before. Not that there had ever been any gap between them, for Neil,
partaking more of the nature of their dead mother than Alison, had
always been the one to whom Isabel had clung, and whom she had gone to
with her troubles when their father was in his sterner and most exacting
moods.
Alison, too, came twice to see how the patient was; but here, somehow,
his brother's manner and words are jarred upon Neil, for there seemed a
want of sympathy and a suggestion of Alison's feeling free and
independent, now that the autocrat of their house, hold had been cast
down from his throne.
Just before morning, too, Aunt Anne had been in, ready to assert that
she might just as well have sat up and kept her nephew company, for she
had not slept a wink, her eyes stubbornly refusing to support her
declaration, for they looked as if they had been tightly closed for
hours.
As the morning progressed, and the injured man still lay in a
stupor-like sleep, visitors and messengers arrived with inquiries about
his state.
Beck was one of the first, and he came in the hope that Isabel would
contrive to see him for a few minutes. He was not disappointed, for he
had not been seated many minutes before Isabel came into the drawing
room quite by accident, to fetch some work left on one of the chairs,
and in an instant her hands were clasped in those of the young sailor.
"No, no!" she cried excitedly. "You know what papa said."
"Yes," he said earnestly; "and it would be cowardly and mean of me to
take advantage of his lying there helpless. See, I will try and act
like a gentleman,"--he dropped her hands--"I only want to tell you,
Isabel, that, come what may, I shall keep to my course. Some day, when
he is well again--"
"Then you think he will get well?" she cried eagerly.
"Yes; why not?" responded Beck. "I say, some day, when he is well
again, he may alter and not be so set against me, and I am going to wait
till then."
"Yes," she said with a sigh.
"I am not going to doubt you for a moment, Isabel. I don't think, after
all these years, you could turn from me; and when your father sees
really what is for your happiness, he will, I believe, relent."
Tom Beck had no opportunity to say more, for just then Aunt Anne bustled
into the room.
"You, Mr Beck?" she said. "Why, I thought it was your father."
"He is going to try and get across, by and by, in the invalid chair. He
is not up yet, and honestly I do not think he is fit to leave his bed;
but he says he must, and he will."
"Poor man!" sighed Aunt Anne. "Oh, dear me, Mr Beck, what a deal of--
Isabel, my dear, don't wait."
"No, Aunt," said the girl quietly; and then, to herself, "Papa must have
told Aunt Anne not to let me be along with Tom, or she would not have
spoken like that."