But sometimes the grey eyes would open and smile with delicate winsomeness at Alvina, and Alvina smiled back, with a cheery, answering winsomeness. But that costs something.
On the evening of the second day, Miss Frost got her hand from under the bedclothes, and laid it on Alvina’s hand. Alvina leaned down to her.
“Everything is for you, my love,” whispered Miss Frost, looking with strange eyes on Alvina’s face.
“Don’t talk, Miss Frost,” moaned Alvina.
“Everything is for you,” murmured the sick woman—“except—” and she enumerated some tiny legacies which showed her generous, thoughtful nature.
“Yes, I shall remember,” said Alvina, beyond tears now.
Miss Frost smiled with her old bright, wonderful look, that had a touch of queenliness in it.
“Kiss me, dear,” she whispered.
Alvina kissed her, and could not suppress the whimpering of her too-much grief.
The night passed slowly. Sometimes the grey eyes of the sick woman rested dark, dilated, haggard on Alvina’s face, with a heavy, almost accusing look, sinister. Then they closed again. And sometimes they looked pathetic, with a mute, stricken appeal. Then again they closed—only to open again tense with pain. Alvina wiped her blood-phlegmed lips.