“I can make no promise,” Daisie reiterated, so resolutely that the arch schemer had to give up her point, and proceeded in sullen silence to the presence of the dying man.
He was awake and conscious, his eyes turning to the door with a look of yearning.
Daisie’s tender heart was touched with pity as she gazed on the pallid, pain-drawn face, and she softly touched his hand while she whispered:
“I am so sorry!”
Then she saw that they had all gone out into the hall, except the widow, leaving them alone with the sufferer.
She felt herself pushed gently into a chair by Mrs. Fleming, who whispered:
“I pray you be kind to him.”
“Be kind to me,” echoed Royall faintly, as his cousin withdrew to the window, and his sunken blue eyes searched her face wistfully for some sign of tenderness.
It was a cruel position for any girl to be placed in. Daisie felt its pathos in the depths of her tender heart, that ached for the dying man, who had given her his love in vain.
She whispered again, with a broken sob: