“It is my punishment,” he groaned, “for a life of arrogance and pride. It has been a kind of tyranny to them all, and now I am to lie here, helpless, deceived by everyone in turn. My punishment—my punishment! Better that I had never awakened to my wretched state.”
At that moment there was the faint rustling made by a door being softly opened and passing over a thickly piled carpet, and directly after a faint shadow fell across his couch, then another, and there was a faintly heard sob.
“Hush, dearest; he sleeps more lightly now.” Ralph Elthorne’s head was turned away from the speaker, but he knew the gentle voice, and he repeated to himself the words wonderingly, “Hush, dearest; he sleeps more lightly now.” To whom was Nurse Elisia speaking so tenderly?
The answer came at once.
“Oh, nurse, dear nurse, is he never to be well and strong again?”
The words came from the speaker’s heart so full of love and sorrow that there was a stifling sensation in the listener’s breast, and when, directly after, he felt warm breath upon his cheek, and a kiss, light almost as the breath itself, his arms clasped Isabel to his breast.
“Papa! papa!”
That was all; but as Nurse Elisia turned away to the window, it seemed to her that father and daughter were closer together in heart than they could have been for years.