“What’s that about Perdita?” demanded Tom from the bed; for, with the abnormal acuteness of perception that sometimes characterizes the dying, he had caught her name. “A letter for her? Send for her, Miss Lockhart, please! I want to see her before I go. And she ought to be here besides. Tell her that he’s dead and I’m dying and she’ll come.”
Philip questioned Marion’s face with a look, and she responded by a look of assent. She had long ago divined the secret of poor Tom’s love, and now the new birth in her own heart had quickened her sympathies toward all lovers. “I will write her a message and send it off immediately,” she said, walking up to the bedside and touching the boy’s hand softly with her own. “She will be here by the time the surgeon has dressed your wounds, and then you’ll be feeling better. You are not to die, sir. Madame Desmoines and I will nurse you and make you well.”
“That’s all right,” said Tom, closing his eyes with a sigh; and, yielding to his exhaustion, he sank into a semi-somnolent state which seemed likely to last some time.
“By-the-by,” said Philip, when Marion had written her message to Perdita, “there’s this boy’s father; I forgot about him; he must be summoned instantly. I’ll send word to him post-haste.”
“Do you think he will come?” she answered, glancing at him for a moment and then looking away. But before Philip could reply to so singular a query, she responded to herself, “I suppose he would. And it would be worth while to have him here. Mr. Grant was his guest last night. He might help in finding the murderer.”
“After what I’ve seen to-night,” Philip remarked, “I should hardly like to ask you where the murderer is.”
“This is different,” she returned, “I know nothing. I see only people that I love. Don’t think of me that way, Philip.”
“You know how I think of you, Marion.”
“If I did not, I could not bear this.”
They were in the little sitting-room down stairs, standing by the window where they had so often stood before. Overhead was audible occasionally the soft footfall of Mrs. Lockhart, moving about in the room where Grant lay. The east was exquisite with the tints of approaching sunrise, and the calm and strength of nature made the morning sweet. The earth, which had wheeled through the light and darkness, the life and death of so many myriad years, still maintained her tireless pace no less freshly than on the first day. Could a human heart, also, turn as hopefully from the shadows of the past, and voyage onward through untraveled paths toward the source of light? or must the dust and gloom of weary years still cling to it and make its progress dreary? Love is truly life: deprived of it, body and soul alike stagnate and decline; but, gifted with its might, we breathe the air of heaven even in the chamber of death, and our faces are illuminated even in a dungeon.