Dr. Grey took her beautiful white hands in his warm palms, and held them firmly.
“Mrs. Gerome, you do not know what is best for you, and must be guided by one who will prove himself your truest friend.”
“Don’t mock my misery! I never had but one friend, and henceforth must live friendless. I knew what was before me, and therefore I dreaded this dark, dark day, and begged you to save her. She was the world to me. She supplied the place of father, mother, husband, society, and because God saw that her loving sympathy and care made my existence a trifle less purgatorial than He saw fit to render it, He took her away. My poor Elsie would quit the highest throne in heaven to come back to her desolate, dependent child; for only she knew how and why I trusted and leaned upon her. Ah, God! it is hard that I who have so long shunned strangers should be at their mercy, in the last hour of trial that can be devised by fiends, or allowed by heaven to afflict me.”
She struggled to free her hands and hide her face, but her 252 companion clasped them in one of his, and attempted to draw her head down to his shoulder.
“No, sir! The grave is the only resting-place for my poor, accursed head. Do not touch me.”
She shrank as far as possible from him, and her voice, hitherto so firm and dry, trembled.
“Mrs. Gerome, I intend to take Elsie’s place. You had confidence in her sagacity and penetration, and know that she was cautious in all things. During her long illness she studied my character and antecedents, and finally begged me to take you under my guardianship when she could no longer watch over you. She was importunate in her appeal, and to comfort and compose her I gave her a solemn promise that at her death I would take her place. You may deem me intrusive, and perhaps presumptuously impertinent, but time proves all things, and, after a little while, you will cling to me as you so long clung to her. I shall wait patiently for your confidence; shall deserve,—and then exact it. You need a strong arm to curb and guide you,—you need a true, honest heart, to sympathize with your sorrows and difficulties,—you need a fearless friend to defend you from the assaults of gossip and malice; and all these, if God spares my life, I am resolved to be to you. You can not repulse, or offend, or chill, or wound me, for my word is sacredly pledged to the dead; and, by the grace of God, I will strictly and fully redeem it, when we meet at the last day.”
The earnestness of his manner, the grave resolution of his tone, and the invincible fearlessness with which his clear, calm, penetrating eyes, looked into hers, seemed momentarily to overawe her; and she sat quite still, pondering his unexpected words. Pressing her cold fingers very gently, he continued,—
“Elsie had such confidence in my discretion, and friendly interest in your welfare, that she requested me to warn her of her approaching dissolution in order that she might communicate something, which she assured me she desired to confide to me before her death. The paralysis of her tongue prevented the fulfilment of her wish, but you saw how keenly she 253 suffered from her inability to utter what was pressing on her heart. You can not have forgotten that her last act was to put your hand in mine, and you heard my solemn acceptance of the charge committed to me.”
An expression of dread that bordered on horror, came over her ghastly face, and her hands grasped his, almost spasmodically.