They went in several times that day to look at him; he lay always in the same position, his face shaded with his hand and turned from the light, sleeping heavily they thought, but sleep and Earle were strangers. He lay there—only Heaven knew what he suffered during these hours of silence and solitude—going over and over again in his own mind all that he had ever said or done to Doris. She had been difficult to win; she had been coy, and he thought proud, sensitive; but he did really believe, from the depths of his heart, that she loved him. What motive could she have had in deceiving him if she had not really loved him? It would have been just as easy to have said so as not. There was no need for the deception. She could have rejected him just as easily as she accepted him.
He alternated between hope and despair. At one time he felt quite sure that she loved him, and that this was only a caprice, nothing more; she was determined not to be easily won. Then his mood changed, and he despaired. She had never loved him, and preferred leaving home and every one rather than marry him.
Still, in one thing, he was inflexible; let it be how it might, he was determined to find her. He would search the whole world through, but find her he would.
He was spared, in that hour of anguish, one trial; no pang of jealousy came to him; he felt certain of one thing, at least, if Doris did not love him, she loved no one else. If she would not marry him, she was not going to marry another. He knew quite well that here at Brackenside she had seen no one; thank Heaven at least for that.
Then a deep, heavy, dreamless sleep came over him. When he woke again it was night and honest Mark, with a face full of bewildered pain, was standing over him.
"Come, Earle," he said, "this will never do; you have been here all day without food. You must not give way after this fashion."
But the troubled eyes raised to his had no understanding in them.
"Remember," continued Mark, with his simple eloquence, "you are the only son of your mother, and she is a widow."
The words, in their simple pathos, struck Earle. He rose from his couch, and Mark saw, as he did so, that he shuddered and trembled like one seized with mortal cold.
"What do you wish me to do, Mark?" he said.