Before morning Falconer became delirious. He did not rave nor shout, but he talked incessantly, with his eyes wide open and fixed vacantly, and his long hand plucking at the bedclothes. Nell stole in from her room, though she had promised to rest and leave the night duty to the village nurse, and, sitting beside him, held his hand.
At the touch of her cool fingers he became quiet for a moment or two, and something like a smile crossed his pain-lined face; but presently he began again. Sometimes he was back at the Buildings, and he hummed a bar or two of music while his fingers played on the counterpane as if it were a piano. Once or twice he murmured her name in a tone which brought the color to Nell's face and made her heart ache. But it did not need the whisper of her name to tell her Falconer's secret. She knew that he loved her, for he had told her so at the moment when Drake had seen them walking together in the garden.
And as she sat and held his hand, she tried to force her mind from dwelling on Drake, and to remember the devotion of the stricken man beside her.
Though he had confessed his love, he had asked for nothing in return. He had said that he knew that his passion was hopeless, but that he could not help loving her, that he must continue to do so while life lasted.
"I will never speak of it again," he had said. "You need not be afraid. I don't know why I told you now; it slipped out before I knew——No, don't be afraid. All I ask is that you should still look upon me as a friend, that you will still let me be near you as often as is possible. It is too much to ask? If so, I will go away—somewhere, and cease to trouble you with the sight of me!"
And Nell, with tears in her eyes—as Drake had seen—had given him her hand in silence, for a moment or two, and then, almost inaudibly, had answered:
"I am sorry—sorry! Oh, why did you tell me? No, no; forgive me! But you must not go. I—I could not afford to lose your—friendship!"
"That you shall not do!" he had said, very quietly, and with a brave smile. "Please remember that I said I knew there was no hope for me. How could there be? How could it be possible for you—you!—to care for me? But a weed may dare to love the sun, Miss Lorton, though it is only a weed and not a stately flower. I ought not to have told you; but that little success of mine, and the prospect it has opened out, must have turned my head. But you have forgiven me, have you not? and you will try and forget that I was mad enough to show you my heart?"
He had not waited for her to respond, but had left her at once, and, so that she should not think him quite heartbroken, had hummed an air as he went.
And now that he lay here 'twixt life and death, Nell's heart ached for him, and she longed, with a longing beyond all words, that she could have returned the love he bore her.