“Margery!” whispered the sick man; and then he tried to raise his head from the pillow. “Margery!” he repeated.
“I think Sir Douglas is ill,” said Margery, rather frightened, turning to the servant.
“It is weakness, my lady,” returned the man.
“Let me raise him a little,” said the earl. “I think he wants to speak.” In a lower tone he added to the servant: “He’s much weaker than he was this morning; what is it?”
“Spasms at the heart, my lord; his heart is very weak.”
“Don’t be alarmed, my darling,” whispered the earl to Margery. Then he put his arm round the sick man, and raised him easily into a sitting posture.
Sir Douglas tried to murmur thanks, but for a few seconds his weakness was too great. Then, as his strength came back, he stretched out a thin, white hand to the girl sitting in the shadow.
“Come into the light,” he whispered, “that I might see your face.”
Margery slipped her hand into the speaker’s weak, trembling one, and bent toward him as the earl stirred the fire into a blaze.
The girl’s eyes met the sick man’s hollow, dark ones, which were full of strange eagerness and excitement, and again she seemed to remember them.