For the first time the weary look had left her face. "Mr. Flood, if you can help me! I have a friend, the dearest friend I have in the world, who believes she is going to be blind. I don't believe it! I will not! And yet, it would not be remarkable—she has been through so much, so much! Oh, I cannot bear to think of it!"
Her hands were clasped on her knees, and she bent her head over them to hide the tears in her eyes.
"You have been with her this afternoon?" Flood surmised.
"We have spent the afternoon at an oculist's," she said. "I have begged her for weeks, for weeks, to let me take her—but she is so proud, oh, so foolishly proud—and to-day—to-day—Oh, it is unbearably cruel!"
She arose, and stood half turned from him, to hide her emotion, swaying a little; and intensely as he had wanted many things, Flood had never wanted anything so keenly as to comfort her—to comfort her by taking her in his arms, if he could, but above all, by any means, to comfort her. Hitherto it had seemed impossible, in his modesty, to make her realize his existence apart from the multitude; he welcomed this heaven-sent opportunity. Quite suddenly, in his need, he found his faith in Ogilvie increased a hundredfold; but he was too much concerned to perceive the humor of it.
"Oh, but—" he cried, "but I should never in the world accept one man's opinion as final! And I assure you, Ogilvie is called in consultation by Blake, Wilson, Whitred. I should certainly have her see him!"
She seated herself again, wearily. "Ah, she is so proud! It is only when she sees I am fairly breaking my heart over her that she will let me do anything."
"Then she is not—she has not——?"
"Oh, as for what she has and what she is, those are quite two different things, Mr. Flood! She is the dearest and loveliest and bravest creature in the world. She is more than I could possibly tell you. I have adored her ever since she was one of the big girls in the school where I was a tiny one. My father and mother were abroad, and Cecilia was up here in the North, with her father's people, and then married; and I was left in Georgia at school, oh, such a lonely little mite! Eleanor was everything in the world to me—big sister, little mother, friend—everything! Then she married, and my father died abroad and dear Mamma took me over with her. Eleanor and I wrote to each other, and I was godmother for her little boy; but Mamma and I were in France until—until Mamma died, three years ago; and it was only last year, when I came to live with Cecilia, that I found my Eleanor again."
Unconsciously she was revealing to Flood more of her life than he had known before; he was afraid to interrupt by so much as a question. His face had again taken on the expressionless mask which so well covered his emotion or interest.