"He has swooned," said Austin. "It was too soon."
The doctor shook his head.
"No; better now than later."
After a moment or two Blair opened his eyes.
"Have you told me all?" he demanded, and there was something in the tone and the wild glare of his eye that smote Austin Ambrose and made him quail.
"Yes," he said, after a moment's pause, "everything has been done, Blair. Everything. I think you will know that without my saying it. There is no hope—there was none from the first. She was not seen after the tide reached her—she will not be seen again. Blair, you will play the man for—for all our sakes," and he pressed the hot hand clutching the quilt.
Blair looked at him and withdrew his hand; they saw his lips move once or twice, and guessed whose name they formed; then he spoke.
"Austin, did you ever pray?" It was a strange, a solemn question. "If so, pray now, pray that I may die!"
Over the weeks that followed it will be well to draw a veil; enough that during them the strong man hovered between life and death, at times raving madly and calling upon the woman he had loved and lost, at others lying in a stupor which was Death's twin sister.
As soon as he was able to walk with the aid of a stick, Blair got out of the house unnoticed and made his way to Appleford.