“My dear young lady,” the doctor said, wheeling, with suspicious abruptness, in his chair, “be sure that it is only your own best good that is considered. There are cruel facts in life that we have to face. This seems very hard for you now, I know. It is hard! He is a brave man, and believe me, my child, he knows best.”
Margaret half rose from her seat. “‘He’?—he knows best—Richard? Does he say—did Mr. Daunt——”
He took her hand as a father might. “It was not easy for him,” he said simply.
She bowed her head in piteous acquiescence, and held his fingers a moment, her lips striving courageously for a smile, and then went silently out.
As she passed Daunt’s closed door on the way to her room, she stretched out her arms and touched its dark panels softly, fearfully, and then leaned forward, and once laid her lips against the hard grained wood.
An hour later, from where he lay, Daunt could see the bulbous, ulstered figure of the colored driver as he waited by the porch to take his single passenger to the distant Lake station. He could see the rake of the horses’ ears as the man swung his arms, pounding his sides to keep the blood circulating. His steamy breath made a curdling smoke-cloud about his peaked cap.
Daunt’s blood forged painfully as the square ormolu clock on the mantel pointed near to the hour. There were lines of sleeplessness beneath his eyes; his face was instinct with suffering. Through his open door came the mingled tones of conversation in the rooms beyond.
He was sitting up, his vigorous hair, grown over-long during his illness, blending its hue with that of the dark chair-cushion. The white collar that he wore seemed to have lent its pallor to his cheeks.
He felt himself to have aged during the night. Through the long weeks since his accident, he had hoped against hope. The doctors had talked speciously of change of scene and bracing mountain air. He had been glad enough to leave the foreboding atmosphere of the hospital for this more cheery hill-top harbor. He had never known nor asked by what arrangement Margaret was now with him; it had seemed only natural that it should be so. His patches of delirium memories were every one brightened by her face and touch, and this state had merged itself gradually into the waking consciousness when she was always by. Without questioning, he had come to realize that whatever might have risen between them in the past was forever gone, and rested content in her near presence and the promise of the future.