“I will not leave you, Keith,” Anna replied, taking her low seat again at his side, “never, any more. It is the will of God.”
The next day Keith was much stronger. He was able to walk about the room, to sit up for an hour at a time, and to talk and plan to his heart’s desire. His spirits were high, and he was full of irrepressible happiness, and yet a wistful, grateful question always rose in his eyes when they rested upon Anna. The marriage was arranged to take place in Keith’s room at six o’clock. Dr. Durham had consented to remain and perform the ceremony, returning to Boston that night. Keith’s physician had interposed no objection to the plan, and even regarded the inevitable excitement as likely to be a benefit rather than an injury to his patient.
“He needs you, Miss Mallison,” he remarked with an emphasis which Anna felt to be peculiarly significant, finding him a man of few words.
It was five o’clock, and Anna had gone to her room to make ready for the ceremony. At Keith’s urgent desire, and by the aid of one of the many efficient friends whom the circumstances of his illness had gathered around him, a white dress had been ordered for her. She found it now, lying in delicate tissue wrappings upon her bed, and beside it a box of orange flowers whose fragrance filled the room.
She was becoming a little inured to luxury; colour, warmth, perfume, delight to sense, seemed here to be the natural order. A vague perplexity lay below it all, but she had ceased now to ask questions.
As she bent to take her wedding-gown from its wrappings, some one knocked at her door. It was Dr. Durham. There was a shade of anxiety upon his kind old face, and he asked her to come with him into an alcove at the end of the hall. With an uneasy stirring at her heart, Anna followed him. Keith’s physician was standing by a table in the alcove, evidently awaiting them.
Anna looked into his face, waiting without speaking for what he might have to say. Surely it was impossible that Keith could be worse; it was not ten minutes since she left him.
“Miss Mallison,” said the doctor, gravely, “I have been having a little conference with your friend, Dr. Durham, and we find that there is a chance that you may be under some misapprehension of the actual conditions under which—under which you are about to take an important step.”
“I did not understand it myself, my dear girl, until within the last hour,” interposed Dr. Durham; “and I really don’t know now what we ought to do. Still, perfect frankness, perfect understanding, you know, may be better for all parties.”
The good old man was visibly oppressed with the burden of the part he had to bear in the interview. Motionless Anna stood, only turning her eyes from one man to the other in troubled wonder.