“I should like to see her,” said the girl, enthusiastically, “that I might tell her how noble and good you are. There, you see how I make an idol of my brother Richard.”
He started, and looked hard at her.
“Yes,” she said, “brother Richard—you were behaving like a dear brother to me, only I could not understand. I never had a brother, but you will be one to me still. You will not stay away, Richard, even if I love you, for it is a chastened love now—one that I need not feel ashamed to own. You’ll not stay away, but come and sit with me, and read to me, as you did before?”
He shook his head sadly.
“Yes—yes, you will come,” she cried, putting her hands together. “I shall have something to live for then—a little longer—and we can sit and talk of her—of Valentina. If you stay away—I—I—shall—die.”
It was no fiction of the lips, and Richard knew it, as her voice grew weaker, and she seemed to droop. The mark was upon her face, telling that she was one of those soon to fall. Her pitiful appeal went to his heart; and raising her in his arms, he pillowed her head upon his shoulder, and kissed her quivering, pallid lips, as in a voice broken with emotion he muttered in the familiar old scriptural words—
“God do so to me, and more also, my poor stricken lamb, if I do not try and smooth your poor, thorny path.”
Once, and once only, did her poor, thin lips respond to his caress. Then, her transparent, white hand was passed lightly over his forehead; her eyes closed, and with a faint sigh of content, she lay quite still, her fluttering breath telling, at the end of a few minutes, that she had, thoroughly exhausted, fallen asleep.