"I am glad you did not depend on me," said Mr. Haveloc, "I should have blundered over the turnip fields all day, and brought you nothing."
"Well, do not you find it very warm," said Mr. Lindsay, "beautiful grapes you have! Where do they come from?"
"Taste them, doctor," said Aveline, "Mr. Haveloc brought them."
The doctor looked at Mr. Haveloc, gave a slight shake of the head, and tasted the grapes. He believed him under the illusion of an attachment to Aveline; for middle-aged people are apt to consider the affections as illusions. But he pitied him, as he would have done any one suffering under a nervous complaint, for he knew that while they last, nervous complaints are as definite as the loss of a limb.
But soon these fits of irritation disappeared altogether; she became placid, grateful, tender; her strength was ebbing away.
Mr. Haveloc came in the morning, only to depart at night. His attention was unremitting; and Aveline seemed only to live in his presence. To wait for his coming; to kindle into life at his footstep; to rest for hours content to look at him; to talk to him on religious subjects, in which he became the learner, and she unconsciously, the teacher. These privileges as she considered them, soothed her later hours, and softened her pilgrimage to the grave. It was not the "Valley of the Shadow" to her. She possessed the sacred support, the healing consolation of a profound religious conviction, which she had not delayed till that hour to seek and to enjoy; and her sickness had purchased for her what she never could have obtained in the days of her beauty and health—the companionship of the person she loved. And, always in extremes, he devoted himself to her comfort with a zeal that astonished Mrs. Fitzpatrick. He seemed to know intuitively how to arrange her flowers—to move her pillows, how to amuse her when she was calm, and to be silent when she was weary. He knew how to draw her attention from her mother on those rare occasions when Mrs. Fitzpatrick gave way to a burst of sorrow. He was her confidant in those trifling arrangements for the future with which she was unwilling to disturb her mother's feelings.
And to her subdued and serious state of mind, her attachment to him took the quiet colour of her other thoughts. She knew that she had done with life; and her affection for him was such as she might carry beyond the tomb.
And thus subdued by illness, yet sustained by the brightest hopes, she tranquilly awaited the moment when her Angel should summon her from the earth.