“Dear Malcolm, this wrings your heart cruelly, I know. You could endure it with fortitude if it were yourself instead of me. It is for my fate alone that you grieve; and your grief is the only thing that troubles me. But do not weep so bitterly; remember that in a few short hours all my earthly troubles will be over. And if it is the manner of my death that appals you, remember that hundreds as young, as delicate, and as innocent as your Eudora, have endured as dark a doom. And think that I have strength given me to meet my fate, and reflect that by this hour to-morrow it will be all the same to Eudora’s emancipated spirit as if she had died in a bed of purple and fine linen, with ministering friends around her. And now look up, dear friend. We have but an hour to pass together, and I wish you to try to calm yourself and listen to me, for there are some things that I want to commission you to do.”
While Eudora was speaking, the sobs that burst from Malcolm’s agonized bosom shook his whole frame. But with an almost superhuman effort he subdued the storm of anguish, and forced himself to be calm.
Then, still kneeling by her side, he took her wasted hand in his own, gazed with unutterable love in her spirit-like face, and listened with reverential tenderness to her last words.
With her hands still clasped in his, and her eyes dwelling upon his with unutterable love and faith, she spoke:
“Dear Malcolm, when you were here the other day I requested you to promise me that you would mingle with the crowd to-morrow, and place yourself near the—the scene of my death, so that at the very last I might look upon the face of a friend. Do you remember?”
“Yes, dearest Eudora; and I will keep my promise—ay, if it drives reason from its throne—as it is sure to do,” he added, mentally.
“But I release you from that promise, Malcolm. It should never have been asked or given; the trial is too great for human nature to bear; a woman, even a fragile girl, has strength given her to endure that which it would kill or craze the man who loves her to witness; therefore you must not see me die.”
“But, dear Eudora—”
“Now, hear me out before you interrupt me. I have released you from that promise, but there is another which I wish you to make me—only one, dear Malcolm; for though there are several requests that I wish to make of you, there is but one promise by which I mean to bind your faith.”
“And what is that, dear Eudora?”