"My dear, I think you must know that there is nothing in the world I would not do for you."
"I am sure of that: but this is not very difficult. It is only to answer one or two questions. Every one here is very good to me—but they make one mistake: they think because I have broken for ever—with—Mr. Hamleigh, that it can do me no good to know anything about him—that I can go on living and being happy, while I am as ignorant of his fate as if we were inhabitants of different planets. But they forget that after having been all the world to me he cannot all at once become nothing. I have still some faint interest in his fate. It hurts me like an actual pain not to know whether he is alive or dead," she said, with a sudden sob.
"My poor pet!" murmured the Major, taking her hand in both his own. "Have you heard nothing about him since you left London?"
"Not one word. People make believe that there was never any such person in this world."
"They think it wiser to do so, in the hope you will forget him."
"They might as well hope that I shall become a blackamoor," said Christabel, scornfully. "You have more knowledge of the human heart, Uncle Oliver—and you must know that I shall always—remember him. Tell me the truth about him just this once, and I will not mention his name again for a long, long time. He is not dead, is he?"
"Dead!—no, Belle. What put such a notion into your head?"
"Silence always seems like death; and every one has kept silence about him."
"He was ill while he was in Scotland—a touch of the old complaint. I heard of him at Plymouth the other day, from a yachting man who met him in the Isle of Arran, after his illness—he was all right then, I believe."
"Ill—and I never knew of it—dangerously ill, perhaps."