‘Then you really think it meant that I shall’’ he cried, tremblingly. ‘O don’t! I can’t die!’
‘Your brother called on what he loved best,’ said Albinia. ‘It may mean nothing. Or rather, it may mean that your dear twin-brother is watching for you, I am sure he is, to have you with him, for what makes your mortal life, however long, seem as nothing. It was a call to you to be as pure on earth as he is in heaven. O Gilbert, how good you should be!’
Gilbert did not know whether it frightened him or soothed him to see his superstition treated with respect—neither denied, nor reasoned away. But the ghastliness was not in the mere fear that death might not be far off.
The pillow had turned a little on one side—Albinia tried to smooth it—the corner of a book peeped out. It was a translation of The Three Musqueteers, one of the worst and most fascinating of Dumas’ romances.
‘You wont tell papa!’ cried Gilbert, raising himself, in far more real and present terror than he had previously shown.
‘How did you get it? Whose is it?’
‘It is my own. I bought it at Richardson’s. It is very funny. But you wont tell papa? I never was told not; indeed I was not.’
‘Now, Gilbert dear, will you tell me a few things? I do only wish what is good for you. Why don’t you wish that papa should hear of this book?’
Gilbert writhed himself.
‘You know he would not like it?’