"I do not think you look so well to day, Egerton, you have a feverish excited air, and your voice is decidedly weaker," observed the Colonel.
"Perhaps we ought not to stay," said Miss Vernon.
"I beg you will not leave me," I gasped.
After a little more conversation a message from Mr. Winter called the Colonel out of the room, and Kate and I were tête-à-tête.
"Nurse gave rather a melancholy account of you yesterday," said Miss Vernon, "she said you were all alone and 'dissolute' by yourself. Have you no books?"
"I do not feel up to reading, but if I had any one to read out to me—Gilpin has not time."
"I would be delighted, I will come here and read to you and Mrs. Winter every day."
"You are most kind."
The excitement of her visit was too much for me, and I felt a faintness stealing over me. Miss Vernon observing the deadly pallor of my face, with an expression of alarm, felt my pulse. "Let me call some one," she said. I feebly grasped her hand, dreading that an interview so delightful to me should be curtailed.
"It is nothing—air, air!" I articulated with much difficulty. Still leaving her hand in mine, she stretched the other to a screen, and fanned me silently for a few moments; then perceiving the returning colour, "Are you better now?" she said softly, with such an expression of tenderness in her dark eyes, I could have thrown myself at her feet.