“If I could cry,” she said once to Margery, as she pressed her hands to her throbbing temples, “it would loosen the tightness in my throat and about my heart, but I cannot, and I am so tired, and sick, and faint, I shall never cry again or sleep.”
And it would almost seem as if she spoke the truth, for no tears came to cool her burning eyelids, and her eyes grew larger and brighter each day, while sleep such as she once had known had deserted her entirely. They gave her bromide, and morphine, and chloral in heavy doses, but these only procured for her snatches of troubled sleep which were quite as exhausting as wakefulness for she always saw before her that dark waste of waters, with the white face of her lover upturned to the pitiless sky, and heard always that wild cry for her who had been his evil star. Every morning the family at the Knoll sent to inquire for her, and every evening Mr. Beresford rode over to Hetherton Place to ask how she was. And sometimes he staid for half an hour or more, and talked with Margery, not always of the sick girl, or Phil, but of things for which each had a liking and sympathy—of pictures, and statuary, and books—and Mr. Beresford was surprised and delighted to find how intelligent Margery was, and how much she knew of the literature of other countries than France.
“I always had a fancy for everything English or American, particularly the latter,” she said to Mr. Beresford, one evening when they had been discussing English and American authors, and he had expressed his surprise that a French girl should be so well posted.
“You like our country, then?” he said. “Did you ever wish you were part or whole American instead of French?” and he shot a curious glance at her to see what effect his question would have upon her.
For an instant her cheeks were scarlet, and then she turned very white about her lips, and her voice was not quite steady as she replied, “I pray God to make me content in that station to which he has called me, and if he has willed it that I should be French, then French I will remain forever.”
It was a strange answer, and seemed made more to herself than to Mr. Beresford, who felt more certain than ever that Margery knew what he suspected, and was bravely keeping it to herself, for fear of wounding and humiliating Queenie. What a noble woman she seemed to him, and how fast the interest he felt in her ripened into a liking during the days when he went nightly to Hetherton Place, ostensibly to ask after Queenie, but really for the sake of a few minutes’ talk with Margery La Rue, who was fast learning to watch for his coming, and to feel her pulses quicken when he came, and taking her hand in his, held it there while he put the usual round of questions with regard to Queenie and herself, appearing at last almost as much interested in her welfare as in Queenie’s.
It was the dawning of a new life for Margery, this feeling, that Mr. Beresford, the proudest man in Merrivale, found delight in her society and loved to linger at her side. It made everything else so easy, and her life was not one of perfect rest, for Queenie did not improve as the days went on, and to soothe, and quiet, and minister to her was not an easy matter. She could not sleep, and the physician who attended her was beginning to fear for her reason, when she one day said to Margery, “Where is your mother? Why has she never been to see me? Doesn’t she care for me any more?”
“She cares very much,” Margery replied, “and she has been here several times to ask for you, but as you would not see your cousins or grandmother, she did not suppose you would see her. Will you see my mother?”
“Yes, send for her,” was Queenie’s answer, and Pierre was dispatched to Mrs. La Rue, with the message that Miss Hetherton was anxious to see her.
And so Mrs. La Rue went to Hetherton Place, and up to the room where Queenie sat in her easy-chair, with her face so pale and pinched, and her eyes so large and bright, that the impulsive Frenchwoman uttered a cry of alarm, and going to her, threw her arms around her, and cried, “Oh, Queenie, my child, that I should find you so changed.”