"You are ill, Ernest,—dear Ernest, you are ill,—your look freezes me!"
"Nay, Evelyn," said Maltravers, recovering himself by one of those efforts of which men who have suffered without sympathy are alone capable,—"nay, I am better now; I have been ill—very ill—but I am better!"
"Ill! and I not know of it?" She attempted to take his hand as she spoke. Maltravers recoiled.
"It is fire! it burns! Avaunt!" he cried, frantically. "O Heaven! spare me, spare me!"
Evelyn was not seriously alarmed; she gazed on him with the tenderest compassion. Was this one of those moody and overwhelming paroxysms to which it had been whispered abroad that he was subject? Strange as it may seem, despite her terror, he was dearer to her in that hour—as she believed, of gloom and darkness—than in all the glory of his majestic intellect, or all the blandishments of his soft address.
"What has happened to you?" she said, approaching him again; "have you seen Lord Vargrave? I know that he has arrived, for his servant has been here to say so; has he uttered anything to distress you? or has—" (she added falteringly and timidly)—"has poor Evelyn offended you? Speak to me,—only speak!"
Maltravers turned, and his face was now calm and serene save by its extreme and almost ghastly paleness, no trace of the hell within him could be discovered.
"Pardon me," said he, gently, "I know not this morning what I say or do; think not of it, think not of me,—it will pass away when I hear your voice."
"Shall I sing to you the words I spoke of last night? See, I have them ready; I know them by heart, but I thought you might like to read them, they are so full of simple but deep feeling."
Maltravers took the song from her hands, and bent over the paper; at first, the letters seemed dim and indistinct, for there was a mist before his eyes; but at last a chord of memory was struck,—he recalled the words: they were some of those he had composed for Alice in the first days of their delicious intercourse,—links of the golden chain, in which he had sought to bind the spirit of knowledge to that of love.