He placed her in her chair, and stood before her with heaving breast.
"Now tell me all," he said, hoarsely.
"Oh, Alford, you frighten me. You must be more composed. You cannot see Grace, looking and feeling as you do. She is weakness itself;" and she told him how the idol of his heart was slowly, gradually, but inevitably sinking into the grave.
"Alford, Alford," she cried, entreatingly, "why do you look so stern?
You could not look more terrible in the most desperate battle."
In low, deep utterance, he said, "This is my most desperate battle; and in it are the issues of life and death."
"You terrify me, and can you think that a weak, dying woman can look upon you as you now appear?"
"She shall not die," he continued, in the same low, stern utterance, "and she must look upon me, and listen, too. Aunt, you have been faithful to me all these years. You have been my mother. I must entreat one more service. You must second me, sustain me, co-work with me. You must ally all your experienced womanhood with my manhood, and with my will, which may be broken, but which shall not yield to my cruel fate."
"What do you propose to do?"
"That will soon be manifest. Go and prepare Grace for my visit. I wish to see her alone. You will please be near, however;" and he abruptly turned and went to his room to remove his military suit and the dust of travel.
He had given his directions as if in the field, and she wonderingly and tremblingly obeyed, feeling that some crisis was near.
Grace was greatly agitated when she heard of Graham's arrival; and two or three hours elapsed before she was able to be carried down and placed on the sofa in the library. He, out in the darkness on the piazza, watched with eyes that glowed like coals—watched as he had done in the most desperate emergency of all the bloody years of battle. He saw her again, and in her wasted, helpless form, her hollow cheeks, her bloodless face, with its weary, hopeless look, her mortal weakness, he clearly recognized his sombre rivals, Grief and Death; and with a look of indomitable resolution he raised his hand and vowed that he would enter the lists against them. If it were within the scope of human will he would drive them from their prey.