Noel fastened her great eyes on her cousin. “We loved each other; and children are born, aren't they, after you've loved? But mine won't be!” From the look on her face rather than from her words, the full reality of her meaning came to Leila, vanished, came again. Nonsense! But—what an awful thing, if true! That which had always seemed to her such an exaggerated occurrence in the common walks of life—why! now, it was a tragedy! Instinctively she raised herself and put her arms round the girl.
“My poor dear!” she said; “you're fancying things!”
The colour had faded out of Noel's face, and, with her head thrown back and her eyelids half-closed, she looked like a scornful young ghost.
“If it is—I shan't live. I don't mean to—it's easy to die. I don't mean Daddy to know.”
“Oh! my dear, my dear!” was all Leila could stammer.
“Was it wrong, Leila?”
“Wrong? I don't know—wrong? If it really is so—it was—unfortunate. But surely, surely—you're mistaken?”
Noel shook her head. “I did it so that we should belong to each other. Nothing could have taken him from me.”
Leila caught at the girl's words.
“Then, my dear—he hasn't quite gone from you, you see?”