There was an agonized earnest in her words and in her manner, as she thus spoke, kneeling there and even clasping her hands in entreaty. Carlton Brand looked at her for one instant with a great pity; then he said:
"Eleanor Hill, if the promise is one that a man can make and a man can keep, I will make it and keep it!"
"Then promise me neither in word nor act to harm Philip Pomeroy. Leave him to me."
"To you, poor girl?"
"To me! I will so punish him as no man was ever punished."
"You punish him? You, feeble and dying? How?"
"By going back to his house—if they will obey my last wish when the hour comes,—dead."
"That will be punishment enough, perhaps, even for him, if he is human!" slowly said the invalid as he took in the thought. "I promise."
"God bless you!" and poor Eleanor Hill fell forward on the bed and burst into sobs that ended the moment after in a fit of still more violent coughing than that which had racked her half an hour previously. And this did not end like the other, but deepened and grew more hoarse until the white froth flew from the suffering lips, followed by a gush of blood that not only dyed the foam but spattered the bed-covering.
"Heavens! see how you are bleeding, my poor girl! You must have help at once!" The face of the speaker, deadly pale and sorely agitated, told how bad a nurse was this choking, dying girl, in his enfeebled condition, with a terrible wound scarcely yet commenced healing.