"Very soon?" she asked, with her eyes and voice full of earnest inquiry.
"I cannot say exactly when; but soon, certainly."
She pressed her left hand upon her breast, as if to restrain her cough, and cast down her eyelashes. At that moment she seemed remarkably bewitching, soft, modest, and Madonna-like.
I was again about to go, and yet stayed, for I longed to learn, at least, her name.
"And you go cheerfully forth to face danger and death?" she asked, looking up with a mournful smile in her pleading eyes.
"Not cheerfully, for my path is not without its thorns; but for all that I don't dread death, I hope."
"Death!" she said, musingly, as if to herself, while looking at the blood spot on her handkerchief. "Daily I feel myself face to face with him, and shall bid him welcome when he comes nearer, for death has no terrors for me."
"Don't 'ee talk so, darling," said her follower, with a mixture of sorrow and irritation in her manner; "though he you weeps for is a bad 'un at 'art, and I knows it."
"Oh, don't break mine by saying so, nurse."
"I trust that you only fancy yourself worse than you really are," said I, with genuine sympathy in my tone and manner. "Remember, the long and sweet season of summer is before us. You are so young, and life must still be full of hope to you."