"I'll wait the course of events, as this is no time for love-making," he decided, as they drove up to the door, from which the doctor was just emerging.
"Matter of a few hours," he said to Howard. "I am glad you have come. Evidently he wants to see you, or wants something, nobody can make out what. You have heard the news?"
Howard bowed, and entering the house, ran up to his uncle's room. The Colonel was propped on pillows, laboring for breath, and trying to articulate words impossible to speak, while, if ever eyes talked, his were talking, first to Amy and then to Eloise, both of whom were beside him, Amy smoothing his hair and Eloise rubbing his cold hands.
They had been with him for hours, trying to understand him as he struggled to speak.
"There is something he wants to tell us," Eloise said, and in his eyes there was a look of affirmation, while the lips tried in vain to frame the words, which were only gurgling sounds.
What did the dying man want to say? Was he trying to reveal a secret kept so many years, and which was planting his pillow with thorns? Was he back in the palmetto clearing, standing in the moonlight with Dora, and exacting a promise from her which broke her heart? No one could guess, and least of all the two women ministering to him so tenderly,—Amy, because she loved him, and Eloise, because she felt that he was more to her than a mere stranger. She was very quiet and self-contained. The events of the last two days had transformed her from a timid girl into a fearless woman, ready to fight for her own rights and those of her mother. Once when Amy was from the room a moment she bent close to the Colonel and said, "You are my mother's father?"
There was a choking sound and an attempt to move the head which Eloise took for assent.
"Then you are my grandfather?" she added.
This time she was sure he nodded, and she said, "It will all be right. You can rest now," but he didn't rest.
There was more on his mind which he could not tell.