"I did—very much. I'm dying—I suppose you know that, eh?"
"I had heard so. I didn't know"——
"Oh, it's true enough. Don't I show in my looks that I am?"
Amy did not answer immediately nor did her face betray any especial interest in the statement. The General, after scrutinizing her closely, almost anxiously for a moment, relinquished her hand and laughed, half in amusement, half in disappointment.
"You're a cold-blooded little creature, Amy," he cried. "You always were. But you're a faithful little soul—I'd trust you through thick and thin—and I want to do something for you before I go. Also I want you to help me to pay off old scores and spite my lady Julia—you won't mind lending a hand in that, I'll wager." His still brilliant grey eyes twinkled significantly.
Amy watched him passively and smiled a little, wondering why an ugly, faded woman of forty-eight with a sordid past should feel as keenly and cruelly as an untrained girl of eighteen. No answer suggested itself and she sat in silence, watching the dying man and wishing that she, herself, had died long ago.
The General laughed feebly as he looked at her. She was, as he had told her, such a cold-blooded little thing—rather unpleasantly like a fish—but, after all, poor little soul! she had had a beastly hard time of it; why, she looked like an old woman at fifty. He could do one good turn to a friend before he died, at all events.
"Amy," he said at last, "give me your hand, little woman! I want to know if you will marry me. Don't look surprised: this is no freak. You see if we are married I can leave you all my money—I am not poor, though I am not rich—and it's only right that you should have some comfort before you die. Then, too, I want to prevent Mrs. Julia from saying what she will say as soon as I am dead—that I always wanted her and died of grief as well as of my wound, because of her refusal. She shan't say that, by—— She spoilt my life and I'll not die till I've paid her back a little. It seems queer," he went on, with the radiant, mischievous smile that had made his listener's heart ache in the old days, "it seems queer to die a married man, Amy, after living a single one all my life. But it's never too late to mend. How thin your hand is, you poor little thing! You've had hard luck, haven't you?" He relapsed into silence, staring steadily at the wall at the foot of his bed. His eyes grew glazed and feverish.
"Don't leave me," he muttered. "Julia! Julia!"
Amy started and winced.