And all the dreadful truth burst upon Bee's mind, and overwhelmed her with mortification and despair!
With a sudden gasp and a low wail she sank on her knees at his side and dropped her head in her open hands and sobbed aloud.
"Oh, Ishmael, Ishmael, is it so? Have I lived to see you thus? Can a woman reduce a man to this? A proud and selfish woman have such power so to mar God's noblest work? Oh, Ishmael, my love, my love! I love you better than I love all the world besides! And I love you better than anyone else ever did or ever can; yet, yet, I would rather see you stark dead before me than to see you thus! Oh, Heaven! Oh, Saviour! Oh, Father of Mercies, have pity on him and save him!" she cried.
And she wrung her hands and bent her head to look at him more closely, and her large tears dropped upon his face.
He stirred, opened his eyes, rolled them heavily, became half conscious of someone weeping over him, turned clumsily and relapsed into insensibility.
At his first motion Bee had sprung up and fled from the arbor, at the door of which she stood, with throbbing heart, watching him, through the vines. She saw that he had again fallen into that deep and comatose sleep. And she saw that his flushed and fevered face was more than ever exposed to the rays of the sun and the plague of the flies. And she crept cautiously back again, and drew her handkerchief from her pocket and laid it over his face, and turned and hurried, broken-spirited from the spot.
She gained her own room and threw herself into her chair in a passion of tears and sobs.
Nothing that had ever happened in all her young life had ever grieved her anything like this. She had loved Ishmael with all her heart, and she knew that Ishmael loved Claudia with all of his; but the knowledge of this fact had never brought to her the bitter sorrow that the sight of Ishmael's condition had smitten her with this afternoon. For there was scarcely purer love among the angels in heaven than was that of Beatrice for Ishmael. First of all she desired his good; next his affection; next his presence; but there was scarcely selfishness enough in Bee's nature to wish to possess him all for her own.
First his good! And here, weeping, sobbing, and praying by turns, she resolved to devote herself to that object; to do all that she possibly could to shield him from the suspicion of this night's event; and to save him from falling into a similar misfortune.
She remained in her own room until tea-time, and then bathed her eyes, and smoothed her hair, and went down to join the family at the table.