Helena alone was tearless. But her heart seemed dying within her, so sudden, so terrible, so unexpected was this situation.
"Helena, will you consent?" Percy repeated.
"I cannot, oh, I cannot!" she cried.
"Helena!" It was Mrs. Griffith who spoke now through her sobs. "Helena, you are cruel. Don't you know it is a dying man you are refusing to make happy upon his death-bed?"
"There may be one chance for his life, and you are ruining that. It is murder!" Mr. Griffith added.
"He needs some tender woman's care—he must have it!" said the Doctor. "No money can buy the kind of care and nursing he needs during the next month or six weeks."
Helena put her hands to her temple, with a distracted gesture. "Oh—you do not any of you understand!" she cried; "it is not my place—Percy, may I see you alone a moment?"
"H'm—h'm! quite a romance here!" mused Dr. Sydney, as he trotted out of the room with his hands clasped under his coat-tails. "Liver trouble and love affairs together—bad complication—very bad. Enough to pull any man down. Hope the girl will marry him and nurse him. She has the look of a born mother in her face. Some women have. They always make good nurses."
Meanwhile, Helena was kneeling by Percy's bed-side, her hands clasping his, her face luminous with love and her heart torn with conflicting emotions.