“Love one man and engage herself to another! I tell you no! Annie Grant never loved me!”
At this moment Faust (who had been lying quietly, and as if he were quite at home, on a rug by the bedside), roused by the sound of his master’s voice, placed his fore-paws on the bed, and finding himself unnoticed, endeavoured to attract attention by licking first the sick man’s hand and then his face. The effect of the opiate had by this time in a great measure worn off, and roused by Faust’s intrusive affection, Lewis awoke with a violent start, and attempting to raise himself in a sitting posture, gazed around him in surprise, then fell back upon his pillow from weakness. After lying some moments perfectly motionless, he again unclosed his eyes and asked in a low, faint voice, “Am I dreaming still, or did I see Walter?”
“No, you are awake now, dear Mr. Arundel; it is I, Walter. Faust found you out, and brought me to see you.”
As Walter mentioned Faust, Lewis for the first time perceived his old favourite, and stretched out his hand with the intention of patting him, but the effort was beyond his strength, and his arm sank powerless by his side. Faust, however, perceived the attention, and acknowledged it by again licking his hand. Lewis turned his languid eyes from Walter to the dog, and a tear stole down his wasted cheek, then his lips grew compressed, and an expression of anguish overspread his countenance. With consciousness had also returned bitter memories. In the meanwhile Walter, delighted at recovering his long-lost friend, grew loquacious in the fulness of his joy, and ran on in his usual disconnected manner.
“So you haven’t forgotten Faust, then, Mr. Arundel? He has never forgotten you either, poor fellow! all the time you have been away; but I have taken great care of him, you see; he’s nice and fat, isn’t he? We’ve been very good friends too, only we used to quarrel sometimes when he would follow Annie, and I did not like it because—because——” Here he paused, having a kind of confused recollection that this was a subject on which he wanted to say something particular. After waiting for a minute or two his ideas grew in a degree clearer, and he continued—
“You know I took a dislike to poor Annie, because I thought she made you go away. I always thought so until she told me it was not the case, and how fond she was of you.”
When Walter first mentioned Annie’s name Lewis started and made a gesture to induce him to be silent, but the boy did not understand his wishes, and his auditor soon became too much absorbed in the interest of his disclosures to seek again to interrupt him.
“You were talking about Annie just now, you know, before you were quite awake,” resumed Walter, “and you said she did not love you. I remember I thought so too once, and that that was the reason why you went away, and so I took a dislike to her, and would not let Faust follow her, only he would. But we were both quite wrong, for Annie is just as fond of you as Faust and I are, and now I’ll tell you how I came to find it out.” He then in his rambling way gave a childish but perfectly intelligible account of his conversation with Annie Grant, with which the reader is already acquainted. Just as he had finished his recital, Richard Frere returned from his walk in time to overhear the last few words of the history, and to discover that Lewis had fainted from intense emotion.