“Unto death, I fear!” The words were a wail. The proud lips quivered, and a couple of tears forced their way, in spite of him, and both Nathan Blyth and his daughter saw something of the all-absorbing love he bore for his only son.
“Did he—does he know that you have come?”
“He knows nothing of it, and scarce of any other thing,” said the troubled father. “He lies almost unconscious, and as though he had already done with time. Dr. Jephson says there is but one hope. My dear young lady, his father asks you with a breaking heart, ‘Come and help to save my boy!’”
A consent was about to leap from her sympathetic heart, but still, mindful of honour, truth and duty to the last, she only said, “Send Dr. Jephson here.”
Both the squire and her father read decision in her face; the former bowed and took his departure. He owned to himself that he had been in presence of a grace and beauty such as he had never seen since those days long gone by, when his own first and only love, to whom he saw a strong resemblance in the radiant form before him, was yet untorn from his young heart by the unpitying hand of Death.
In a little while, for there was no time to be lost, Dr. Jephson drove up to the Forge in a little low phaeton belonging to the Hall, and in which, with his usual promptitude and energy, he intended to spirit off Lucy, bag and baggage, to the side of the helpless invalid who lay in the last degree of weakness, moaning out the name of Lucy so constantly that all could see how strong a hold she had upon his life and love.
“Well, Miss Lucy,” said the genial doctor, “are you ready? My horse will not stand long, and,” said he, with great seriousness, “every hour is a dead loss to us in a hand-to-hand fight between life and death.”
Lucy was about to repeat the self-evident objections before mentioned, but the doctor interposed,—