They knelt by her couch, reproaching her for her rashness, declaring that they had sent for a physician to save her life.
"It is useless. I will not take an antidote. I am determined to die!" she replied stubbornly, and looked at Devereaux reproachfully, while Lyde caught her hands, exclaiming:
"Oh, Jesse, why couldn't you love her and make up with her, so that she needn't have been driven to this?"
Encouraged by this outburst of sympathy, Roma whispered audibly in her ear:
"If he would only make me his wife, I could die happy!"
"Do you hear?" nodded Lyde to her brother.
"Yes."
"I have dreamed of it so long. I have loved him so well, I cannot be happy even beyond the grave unless I can call him my husband once before I die!" sobbed Roma piteously, and by her labored breathing and spasms of pain it seemed as if each moment must be her last.
"Give her her dying wish lest she haunt you!" whispered the nervous, frightened Lyde.