“WINSTON!”
She gasped and blanched in pain or terror.
“What is the matter? Have I hurt you?” releasing his grasp.
“Yes—HERE!” laying his hand upon her heart, the beautiful eyes terrified and pathetic as those of a wounded deer. “For the love of Heaven, never stab me again with such suggestions. When you die, I shall not care to live. When you cease to love me, I shall wish we had died together on our marriage-day—my husband!”
He let her twine her arms about his neck, laid his cheek to her brow, clasped her tightly and kissed her impetuously, madly, again and yet again—disengaged himself, and ran down the steps. She was standing on the top one, still flushed and breathless from the violence of his embrace, when he looked back from the gate, her commanding figure framed by the embowering creepers, as Mabel's girlish shape had been when Frederic Chilton waved his farewell to her from the same spot.
Did either of them think of it, or would either have reckoned it an ominous coincidence, if the remembrance of that long-ago parting had presented itself then and there?
Herbert spent the day upon the lounge in the family sitting-room—a cosy retreat, between the parlor and the conservatory, which had been added to the lower floor in the reign of the present queen. Her brother's seizure was no trifling ailment. Alternations of stupor and racking spasms of pain defied, for several hours, his wife's application of the remedies she had found efficacious in former attacks. Her ultimate resort was chloroform, and by the liberal use of this, relaxation of the tense nerves and a sleep that resembled healing repose were induced by the middle of the afternoon. The weather continued to threaten rain, although none had fallen as yet, and the wind moaned lugubriously in the leafless branches of the great walnut before the end window of the narrow apartment. It was a grand tree, the patriarch of the grove that sheltered the house from the north winds. Mabel, relieved from watchfulness, and to some extent from anxiety, by her husband's profound slumber, lay back in her chair with a long-drawn sigh, and looked out at the naked limbs of the wrestling giant—the majestic sway and reel she used to note with childish awe—and thought of many things which had befallen her since then, until the steady rocking of the boughs and hum of the November breeze soothed her into languor—then drowsiness—then oblivion.
She awoke in alarm at the sense of something hurtful or startling hovering near her.
The fire had been trimmed before she slept, and now flamed up gayly; the window was dusky, as were the distant corners of the room, and Herbert was gazing steadfastly at her.
“I fell asleep without knowing it. I am sorry! Have you wanted anything? How long have you been awake?”