"Thanks," she sighed, softly, and her eyes looked up at him with an expression which half tempted him to kiss the lips from which he was wiping the stains so carefully, while Mrs. Tracy, at the door, gave some orders to a servant.
"You can go now," she said, returning to the couch, and dismissing him with her usual hauteur of manner; while Maude put up her hand and whispered:
"Come soon—and Jerrie."
Had Harold been convicted of theft or murder he could scarcely have felt worse than he did as he walked slowly through the park, reviewing the situation and wondering what he ought to do.
"If it almost killed her when she thought I loved her, it would surely kill her to know that I do not," he thought. "I cannot undeceive her now, while she is so weak; but when she is better and able to bear it, I will tell her the truth.
"And if she dies?" came to him like the stab of a knife, as he remembered how white she looked as he held her in his arms. "If she does," he said, "no one shall ever know of the mistake she made. In this I will be true to Maude, even should the world believe I loved her and told her so. But, oh Heaven! spare me that, and spare Maude's life for many years. She is too young, too sweet, too good to die."
This was Harold's prayer, and that of many others during the week which followed, when Maude's life hung on a thread, and every bell at the Park House was muffled, and the servants spoke only in whispers; while Frank Tracy sat day and night in the room where his daughter lay, perfectly quiet, except as she sometimes put up her hand to stroke his white hair or wipe away the tears constantly rolling down his cheeks.
In Frank's heart there was a feeling worse than death itself, for keen remorse and bitter regret were torturing his soul as he sat beside the wreck of all his hopes and felt that he had sinned for naught. He knew Maude would die, and then what mattered it to him if he had all the money of the Rothschilds at his command?
"Oh, Gretchen, you are avenged, and Jerrie, too! Oh, Jerrie!" he said one day, unconsciously, as he sat by his daughter, who, he thought, was sleeping.
But at the mention of Jerrie's name her eyes unclosed and fixed themselves upon her father with a look in which he read an earnest desire for something.