"By Jove, my good fellow, you are a fool," he broke in upon his own inward colloquy, "an abject fool. The little lady of the speedwell eyes, is as far above you as the stars in heaven, and you know it. A struggling South London doctor might quite as well aspire to the planet Venus, as to the lady of Bramwell Castle. The less such ideas are encouraged, the better."
Resolutely thrusting from him the thoughts that had obtruded themselves unbidden, he drove rapidly on, whilst the grey mists deepened upon the country side; the rain that had begun in a fine drizzle, began to come down in torrents, and the wind rose gradually to the fury of a hurricane. Across the open stretch of heathland, the gale broke with terrific force, the rain lashed Fergusson's face and ran in swift streams down his mackintoshed shoulders and arms; and it was with a little sigh of relief that he turned out of the main road, and into the lane at whose bottom stood the lonely house. Here there was a certain amount of shelter from the high hedges and overshadowing trees, though the great gusts of wind shook the trees until they creaked, and groaned, and bent beneath the blast; and even in the depths of the desolate valley itself, Fergusson found himself nearly lifted from his feet by the hurricane, when he alighted at the green gate in the wall. Elizabeth appeared quickly in answer to his ring, and her grave face made him say sharply—
"She is not worse?"
"She seems less like herself to-night," the servant answered, a little catch in her voice; "she doesn't always know where she is, or who is talking to her. I think—she has got to the end. She can bear no more." The expression used, struck the doctor strangely.
"I think she has got to the end." The same feeling had been in his own mind when last he had visited the beautiful, lonely lady; it had seemed to him, too, as though she had come to the end of her powers of endurance—as though, having borne lash after lash from fortune, she could bear no more.
When he entered her room, he found her lying very still, her face scarcely less white than the pillow against which it rested, her great eyes fixed on the leaping flames of the fire, her hands folded on the sheet, in a way which he had noticed was peculiar to her, the fingers of her right hand close clasped about the plain gold ring, that rested on the third finger of her left.
"Whatever the poor chap who has gone to his account was or did, this woman loved him with an amazing love," Fergusson thought, as he had thought a hundred times before, whilst he spoke gently to his patient, seating himself beside her, and observing her closely, though he talked of everything and anything excepting her health.
"Do you know," she said presently, her voice very low and dreamy. "I think I have come to the end." This repetition of Elizabeth's words, and of his own thoughts, startled Fergusson, but he did not betray his surprise, only answering gently—
"You are worn out now. You have had a long strain, and you were not quite fit to stand it." She smiled up at him, an infinitely pathetic smile.
"It is not only that. I don't want to be morbid. I don't mean to be morbid. But something—seems to have snapped inside me—some vitality, some power has gone, and—I have come to the end."