"I am in the worst trouble that could happen to a woman," she faltered. "It sounds shameful and unwomanly to confess it to you, Keith; but—but I have come to dread the time like death when you will go away from us—go away from me forever, and leave me here to a dreadful fate. My heart is breaking with its sorrow; for I have loved you all my life, and I love you now so dearly that the thought of not seeing you gives me the greatest pain that I have ever known. I did not know that a human heart could suffer so and yet beat on. Keith, must I give you up? Will you not try to love me a little, and some time in the future let me be your wife? I would be such a good wife, Keith—such a good, kind, devoted wife! I would be willing to lay my life down to give you a moment's happiness. I would live for you, die for you, Keith! Believe me, I would make you happy, for I would sacrifice my every hope here and hereafter to that end, and you would never regret marrying me."
His eyes, dark and dilated, were fixed upon her eager face with a slow wonder in their dusky depths. He had never thought of such a thing as Serena Lynne lavishing such a wealth of affection upon himself. It did not make his heart thrill with ecstacy to think of it now.
"I—I do not understand you," he faltered, brokenly, manlike, trying to gain time by evasion. "I—I—It is quite impossible, Serena—quite!"
Her eyes flashed with an ominous light.
"If you are thinking of Beatrix Dane," she cried, angrily, "you are only wasting your time and committing a sin. She is another man's wife, Keith Kenyon. You can never be anything to her."
And Serena never dreamed that the "Uncle Bernard" with whom Keith Kenyon lived—his uncle only by adoption—was the Bernard Dane who had sent for Beatrix to come to his home.
Mrs. Lynne and her daughter both had placed no credence in Keith's assertion that he had been sent thither to escort the girl to her new home. They looked upon that as a vagary of delirium.
Serena urged her own cause until the poor young man's brain, weakened by his long and dangerous illness, grew too confused to grasp the situation or to realize what he was doing; and the day came at length when Keith Kenyon, worn out and weakened in mind and body until he was as feeble in judgment as a child, gave an unwilling consent to make Serena Lynne his wife.
That very day a telegram arrived for him from New Orleans, short and concise, as telegrams usually are.