"My God!" muttered Andrew beneath his breath, so that she heard him not. "My God! Strange news this. Strange news. Philip knew naught of it."
"But," the dying girl went on, "I had none to give him. I liked him well enough then, but I had no love for him. Yet he teased me often; swore some day I should be his; vowed he would never lose me. But at that time my father had resolved to return home, to die, as he said, in his own house where he was born. It was while Camille De Bois-Vallée was absent from Paris that we left for England."
"Ha!" muttered Andrew, again to himself, and unheard by her. "Ha! And he followed?" he said aloud.
"He wrote," the girl went on--and it seemed to him, listening by her side, that her voice was growing weaker--"that, though I had put the sea between us even that should not deter him. He would find me yet; win me. He used no threat, even as he thus wrote; he contented himself with saying he loved me so fondly that he must gain his way to my heart in the end."
"Ay," Andrew said, still unheard by her, "in the end. Well, let's see for the end. He won you away from Philip, anyhow."
"Three years later," Marion continued, "I knew that he had come to London--with the Duchess of Orleans. I was in the Duke of York's garden giving on the Mall, in the suite of his Duchess, when I saw him pass. He, too, saw me. Then he left the Mall and came over to where I was and spoke to me. Said that never for an instant had he forgotten me; never ceased to love me. Now that we had met again, would I not return his love? I told him that I was affianced to Philip. To--to--Philip."
She paused a moment; lay back even more than before on her pillow. Andrew thought she would speak no further. Yet, again, she took up her story.
"Affianced to Philip. Philip, my beloved. Philip whom I shall never see in this world again. Ah! Philip! Philip! Philip!"--and she stretched out her arms before her as though calling to him.
"Heart up, poor girl," Andrew murmured. "Heart up. Ere long you may meet again."
"Never now in this world. Never. And--and--my God! how long I may have to wait in heaven for him ere he joins me. How long!"