[CHAPTER XXVI.]
It was decided that Ronald Valchester should not hear of Jaquelina's strange disappearance. Already he lay at death's door, and the physicians declared that another shock of any kind would utterly destroy his frail hold on life.
As consciousness returned to him they avoided all mention of that once familiar name in the sick-room; yet they knew many a time, by the look in the beautiful, dark-gray eyes, that he was thinking of the girl he had loved so well and lost so sadly.
Sometimes they wondered why he never spoke of her. They did not know how Ronald and Lina had parted—how sorrowfully he had said to her, even as he held the small hands tightly in his own, and looked at her with a soul's despair stamped on his death white face:
"Lina, this is the last time I must hold your hands, or even look into your face while Gerald Huntington lives. You are legally his, and I have never believed in divorce. If the law were to free you, I should still hold you bound to him by a higher power than man's law. So you understand, dear, it is best we should separate wholly, never, perhaps, to look on each other's faces again. I pray God that I may die, and so pass from this life that but a little while ago was so fair and tempting in my eyes, and that is now but an empty desert. For you, my sweet, lost love, may God bless you, and give us both the strength to bear the heavy cross of sorrow!"
And Jaquelina, remembering Doctor Leslie's words that he must not be excited or contradicted in any way, had bowed her head, and answered meekly:
"It must be so if you will it thus, Ronald. God give us both the patience to bear it."
And with those words, and one last, lingering look at the beloved face, Jaquelina had kissed his hands, and gone away, but she had not let him see that look on her face that the others had seen—that hopeless despair and pain that it frightened Walter Earle to remember.
So they kept the story away from Ronald, even while the unspoken language of his eyes said plainer than words:
"I am longing to hear something of my poor lost love. Even to hear her name spoken aloud would be a relief, since it is ever ringing itself in my brain."