Many of the women whom Colonel Carlyle knew would have deemed it an honor to have been loved either in the past or present by the gifted artist. No, there was nothing he could say to the man on the subject, yet he determined that he would at least watch him closely, and if—if there should be even the faintest attempt on his part to revive the intimacy of the past, then woe unto him, for Colonel Carlyle was nerved to almost any act of frenzy.
Bonnibel lifted her head when the colonel was gone and looked at her faithful attendant with a face on which death itself seemed to have set its seal.
"Oh, me! Miss Bonnibel, you are as white as a ghost," exclaimed Lucy. "And no wonder! It is a bad cut, though not very deep. Does it hurt you very much?"
"What are you talking of, Lucy? What should hurt me?" inquired her mistress in a wild, startled tone, showing that she had quite forgotten her wound.
"Why, the cut on your head, to be sure," said Lucy in surprise.
"Oh! Heaven, I had forgotten that," moaned the poor young creature. "I do not feel the pain, Lucy, for the wound in my heart is much deeper. It is of that only I am thinking."
She bowed her face in her hands and deep, smothered moans shook her from head to foot. The delicate frame reeled and shook with emotion like some slender reed shaken by a storm.
Lucy knelt down at her feet and implored her mistress to tell her what she could do to help her in her trouble, whatever it might be.
"Miss Bonnibel," she urged, "tell me something that I can do for you—anything, no matter what, to help you out of your trouble if I can."