Evelyn, still seated where I had left her, sprang to her feet, almost shrieking as she saw my solemn countenance, “Bad news! Oh, tell me the worst!” “Mr. D’Arcy,” I said, “is ill.”
“Not dead!—not dead! Oh, speak!”
“No; but seriously ill.”
“I will go to him, instantly.”
“Stay, Evelyn,” I said, with authority, “he is unworthy of your love.”
She looked at me in blank astonishment.
“The fever he has, he caught in the low neighborhoods, and among the disreputable company he frequents.”
She laughed hysterically.
“What!” she said, “the noble D’Arcy—the refined, the spiritual. Never, by my hopes of Heaven. Go, Mary, would you have me hate you? Look you, he is true and pure as the blessed sunlight.—Unhand me, I say; let me fly to him.”
“Oh! Evelyn, pause, I implore you. What will the world say?”