“Thank you,” he said feebly, as the clergyman stooped and gently wiped the big drops from his hair. “I’ve been talking wildly, I fear. The fever’s in my head. But did not some one,” and he glanced around, “say that they’d send pursuers out after her?”
“I said I would send word to the enemy’s camp,” answered the chaplain; and looking around the room, he singled out an individual who had been a spectator hitherto. “You have heard what has been said,” he continued. “Will you undertake to see that this is done?”
The person addressed nodded his head, and departed immediately, Aylesford watching his retreating figure eagerly till it disappeared through the doorway, when he closed his eyes with a deep sigh, and remained motionless and silent so long afterwards that the clergyman began to think life had departed with that profound expiration.
He, therefore, whispered to the assistant.
“Does he still breathe?”
“Yes!” was the reply, after the speaker had leaned over the invalid for a moment. “He dozes again. That burst of emotion exhausted him terribly, however, and it may be that he’ll never come to again.”
The clergyman made no answer, but clasping his hands, appeared engaged in silent prayer.
In about ten minutes the dying man stirred again. His eyes were still closed, but he murmured incoherently. At first his words were low and disconnected, but gradually he spoke louder; and finally the listeners distinguished parts of sentences. But whether he was referring to the tragedy he had just detailed, or to some other, or whether what he said was purely the effect of delirium, the hearers could not ascertain.
“The pitiless villain,” were his words. “No mercy, no mercy. Oh! that I had run him through when he proposed it. I broke her heart. Mary! Mary! blessed saint,” he exclaimed piteously, “don’t look at me so reproachfully.”
“He thinks she is already dead,” whispered the clergyman to the assistant.