'I'll not think of any more than I can help, except what you tell me.'
'Never think at all, Cora. Oh! what has brought him here? I don't know how I can dare to see him again; and yet he is not gone, is he?'
'Oh no, he is only at the inn. He is coming back again.'
'I must be up. Let me get up,' said Averil, raising herself, but pausing from weakness and breathlessness.
And when they had forced some food upon her, she carried out her resolution, though twice absolutely fainting in the course of dressing; and at length crept softly, leaning on Cora's arm, into the parlour. Though Tom was waiting there, he neither spoke nor came forward till she was safely placed upon the sofa, and then gathering breath, she sought him with her eager eyes, shining, large, lustrous, and wistful, as they looked out of the white thin face, where the once glowing colour had dwindled to two burning carnation spots. It was so piteous a change that as he took her hand he was silent, from sheer inability to speak calmly.
'You have come to tell me,' she said. 'I am afraid I could not thank you last night.' How different that soft pleading languid voice from the old half defiant tone!
'I did not know you had been so unwell,' he forced himself to say, 'or I would not have come so suddenly.'
'I am grown so silly' she said, trying to smile. 'I hardly even understood last night;' and the voice died away in the intense desire to hear.
'I—I was coming on business, and I thought you would not turn from the good tidings, though I was the bearer,' he said, in a broken, agitated, apologetic way.
'Only let me hear it again,' she said. 'Did you say he was free?'