"I have not lost hope: she may yet be mine," he murmured.
Sir William did not answer. He would give her to Arthur now with his whole heart, had her health permitted it. Arthur himself looked ill; in the last few months he seemed to have aged years. A terrible remorse was ever upon him; his life, in its unavailing regret, seemed as one long agony.
They turned to where she was sitting. "Would you not like to walk a little, Ellen?" asked her father.
She rose at once. Arthur held out his arm, and she took it. Sir William was quite content that it should be so: Arthur, and not himself. The three paced the lawn. Ellen wore a lilac silk gown and warm white cloak. An elegant girl yet, though worn almost to a shadow, with the same sweet face as of yore.
But she was soon tired, and sat down again, Arthur by her side. One of the gardeners came up for some orders, and Sir William went away with him.
"I have not been so happy for many a day, Ellen, as I am now," began Captain Bohun. "You are looking quite yourself again. I think--in a little time--that you may be mine."
A blush, beautiful as the rose-flush of old, sat for a moment on her cheeks. She knew how fallacious was the hope.
"I am nearly sure that Sir William thinks so, and will soon give you to me," he added.
"Arthur," she said, putting her wan and wasted hand on his, "don't take the hope to heart. The--disappointment, when it came, would be all the harder to bear."
"But, my darling, you are surely better!"