CHAPTER XXI.
CHRISTMAS EVE.
It was not in the heart of honest Jerry Vane to harbour much of doubt when pity was wanted; and, so far as Ida was concerned, it fully seemed wanted now.
The change that came over her health had been rapid and unexplainable. Her nerves were evidently hopelessly unstrung; she seemed to be pining and passing away in the midst of them all. Her temperament was entirely changed; she could see the light emitted by a magnet in the dark, and always shuddered at the touch of one. The doctors shook their heads, and could only speak of change of air when the season opened, and so forth; while poor Jerry Vane hung about her in an agony of love and anxiety, hoping against hope that she might yet recover and be his dear little wife after all; but when Clare hinted at this, the ailing girl only shook her head and smiled sadly.
It was just shortly before Christmas Eve, however, that Jerry felt himself lured and tempted, with his heart full of great pity for the feeble condition in which he saw the once brilliant Ida, to speak to her again of the love he bore her.
The jealous shame that he had a rival—another who might have won her when he had failed—the lurker whom Desmond and himself had seen—was all forgotten now; and though her bloom was gone, her complexion had become waxen, her beautiful hands almost transparent, her eyes unnaturally large and bright, he seemed to see in her only the same Ida whom he had loved in the first flush of her beauty ere it budded, and whom he had wooed and won in happier and unclouded times, in the same old English home where they were all gathered together.
She approached the subject herself, by saying to him, when they were alone:
'Forgive me, Jerry, if I spoke hastily to you when last we parted.'
'Forgive you!' he exclaimed, in a low voice.
'Yes; surely that is not impossible.'