“A gentleman, Mr. Cornish, to see Miss Trescott,” said the maid. “And he says he must see her for a moment.”
“Alice,” said Josie, under her breath, “you go, please! Say to him that I cannot see him—now! Oh, why did he follow me here?”
“Josie,” said Alice dramatically, “you don’t mean to say that you are afraid of this man! Are you?”
“No, no!” said the girl doubtfully and distressfully; “but it’s so hard to say ‘No’ to him! If you only knew all, Alice, you wouldn’t blame me—and you’d go!”
“If you’re so far gone—under his influence,” said Alice, “that you can’t trust yourself to say ‘No,’ Josephine Trescott, go, in Heaven’s name, and say ‘Yes,’ and be the wife of a millionaire—and a traitor and scoundrel!”
As Alice said this she came perilously near the histrionic standard of the tragic stage. Josie rose, looked at her in surprise, in which there seemed to be some defiance, and walked steadily out to the parlor. I was glad to be out of the affair, and went back to Jim. I stood regarding my broken and forsaken friend, in watching whose uneasy sleep I forgot the crisis downstairs, when I was startled and angered by the slamming of the front door, and heard a carriage rattle furiously away down the street.
Soon I heard the rustle of skirts, and looked up, thinking to see my wife. But it was Josie. She came in, as if she were the regularly ordained nurse, and stepped to the bedside of the sleeping patient. The broken arm in its swathings lay partly uncovered; and across his wounded brow was stretched a broad bandage, below which his face showed pale and weary-looking, in the half-stupor of his deathlike slumber: for he had become strangely quiet. His uninjured arm lay inertly on the counterpane beside him.
She took his hand, and, seating herself on the bed, began softly stroking and patting the hand, gazing all the time in his face. He stirred, and, turning his eyes toward her, awoke.
“Don’t move, my darling,” said she quietly, and as if she had been for a long, long time quite in the habit of so speaking to him; “don’t move, or you’ll hurt your arm.” Then she bent down her head, lower and lower, until her cheek touched his.
“I’ve come to sit with you, Jim, dear,” said she, softly—“if you want me—if I can do you any good.”