The words appeared to fall unconsciously from the lips of our stricken hero.
In his fever dreams, he just dimly remembered hearing it, but he was not quite certain. Anyhow, he wished to hear it from the girl herself.
“Dear nursie, what is your name?”
“My name is Meta?”—this from the maiden, with a blush and a smile.
There was a pause. He would have liked her to have asked, “And what is yours?”
But she did not. She only sat silently there, with the book on her lap, as she had been sitting for the last half-hour.
“Mine is Claude,” he said at last. “May I call you Meta?”
“Ye-es,” with modest hesitation.
“Do call me Claude?”
“Claude,” said the girl, advancing towards him with a very serious countenance, and laying a tiny hand on his pulse, “I think you are going to die. Oh! I trust not. But there is a strange glitter in your eyes to-night—a look I like not, and your pulse flickers feebly. I will call aunt.”