"I was obliged to speak; but, after all, the very pain you now suffer may be your means of deliverance. It is necessary, absolutely necessary for your sake, to take extreme steps. The thing is serious; it can only be combated by extreme measures."
"What way is that? oh, do tell me! I shall always look upon you as my greatest friend if you save me from the terrible fate which seems hanging over me."
"Remember you are never to breathe that I was your informant."
"I never will."
"Well, you must act with guile. In the first place, you must go back to the hospital. You will soon have proof that your sister loves Keith, and that Keith loves her. Tell your sister, or Miss Hunt, that you are very much better, and that you are going back to the hospital to do what little good you can. If you show tact and spirit, you will soon learn your duties, and your sister will be pleased with you; and what is far more important, Captain Keith will be pleased with you. You will be no longer the pretty nonentity who has come to Ladysmith to be a trouble and a worry. No woman ought to be a trouble and a worry who lives in Ladysmith now."
"Yes, but I don't care to be a heroine. You may think nothing of me, but I really don't. If I act as you suggest, how will it get me back Gavon's love?"
"In the first place, he will cease to despise you."
"Oh, he cannot despise me—my darling cannot despise me!" said Kitty, and her lips trembled.
"I am sorry to have to say it, but I greatly fear he does despise you. If you were to look into his heart, you would find that he does. He has his faults—no one has more reason to know that than myself—but he is not a nonentity. He is a brave soldier, and he would not like the girl he marries to be a coward. Now, while you stay in this room, you are acting a coward's part. Go back to the hospital, reinstate yourself, and see that what I tell you is the truth. You will not be very long before you know. Not that Captain Keith makes love to your sister in so many words—he would not do that sort of thing for worlds—but there is a love which fills the eyes when the lips never speak; and if you watch you will see it, and you will also see the same expression in your sister's eyes, although she also would not speak of her love for worlds. When you see that love in her eyes and in Keith's eyes, the time will have come for you to speak openly to your sister, and that is what I am coming to."
"Yes!" said Kitty.