“Oh, Heaven!” he exclaimed, “what anguish it is to feel myself utterly powerless to save you, or to help you, even by the sacrifice of my life and soul, that I would gladly offer for your sake!”
She drew her hand from under his face, and passing it around his bowed head, gently smoothed his hair, while she said:
“All that human power could do to save me you have done. Let that thought support you.”
“But to think that I can do no more!”
“Yes, dearest, truest friend, you can do much yet to console me.”
“Ah, Eudora, how—how can I comfort or help you?”
“Why, for the few remaining days of my life, come to me as often, and stay as long as they will let you.”
“That be sure I will; but, oh I how little good it can do you!”
“It will do me all the good I am capable of appreciating now. Oh, Malcolm! you do not know how much I regret those precious days vainly lost in London when they might have been spent with me.”
“And so do I, dearest; but yet I should have been even more wretched than I am now, had not those days been employed as they were, in using every possible means to gain a respite for you.”