A nurse had brought a screen, and was putting it round the bed where the lad Hudson had breathed his last.
Mollie took the major's hand.
"I will come to see you," she said; "and you will try to be good?"
"For such an angel I would do anything. Oh, I have been bad—yes, I have been very bad; you don't know half. Is there any chance for a worldly chap like me? Not young, either. When I heard you talk to that boy, I felt I would give all the world to be that boy myself."
"If there was a dear lad on this earth, it was George Hudson," she answered.
"I know—so different from what I am! I am not even young, you know, and I have led a—"
"I cannot stay now, Major Strause.—Sister Eugenia, will you look after Major Strause, please? he wants—"
Mollie gave quick directions. The young sister bowed her head. The major made a wry face. He could be good in Mollie's presence, but he did not think he could be good with Sister Eugenia, who was small, and plain, and awkward.
Mollie left the room. All that day the effect of Hudson's death remained with the major, and as Mollie did come into the ward two or three times in the course of the morning, he tried to believe himself satisfied. But when the dead man had been removed for burial, and when his place was occupied by another man, uninteresting, coarse, not particularly ill, Major Strause forgot his good resolutions. He grumbled, and gave the nurses who looked after him a bad time. When Mollie came in he was soothed and comforted, and he could express his feelings to Katherine Hunt. In a day or two the fever left him, and he was able to crawl about a little, and then, as his bed was wanted, to get back to his own hut. Still, the memory of what he had seen Mollie do when Hudson was dying remained with him, and, for the time at least, he gave up all idea of persecuting her, or forcing her, as he expressed it, to listen to his suit. He had no intention, however, of giving Mollie up.
"I will live for her sake, and try to lead a clean life for her sake, and in the end I must win her," he thought. "She is better than any money—she is worth her price in rubies. She is the finest woman God ever made."