CHAPTER XXII. A HAUNTED SOUL.
Helen rose and hastened to her brother, with a heart of lead in her body.
She started when she saw him: some change had passed on him since the morning! Was that eager look in his eyes a fresh access of the fever? That glimmer on his countenance, doubtful as the first of the morning, when the traveller knows not whether the light be in the sky or only in his brain, did look more like a dawn of his old healthful radiance than any fresh fire of madness; but at the same time he appeared more wasted and pinched and death-like than she had yet seen him. Or was it only in her eyes—was she but reading in his face the agony she had herself gone through that day?
“Helen, Helen!” he cried as she entered the room, “come here, close to me.”
She hastened to him, sat down on the bedside, took his hand, and looked as cheerfully as she could, yet it was but the more woefully, in his face.
“Helen!” he said again, and he spoke with a strange expression in his voice, for it seemed that of hope, “I have been thinking all day of what you told me on Sunday.”
“What was that, Poldie?” asked Helen with a pang of fear.
“Why, those words of course—what else? You sang them to me afterwards, you know. Helen, I should like to see Mr. Wingfold. Don’t you think he might be able to do something?”
“What sort of thing, Poldie?” she faltered, growing sick at heart.—Was this what came of praying! she thought bitterly.