"Ellen!"
In timid, wailing tones was the word spoken. Only three days' absence, and she had faded like this! Was it a relapse?--or what had she been doing to cause the change?
For a few minutes, perhaps neither of them was sufficiently collected to know what passed. In his abandonment, he knelt by the chair, holding her hands, his eyes dropping tears. The remorse ever gnawing at his heart was very cruel just then. Ellen bent towards him, and whispered that he must be calm--must bear like a man: things were only drawing a little nearer.
"I should have been down yesterday, but I waited in town to make sundry purchases and preparations," he said. "Ellen, I thought that--perhaps--next month--your father would have given you over to me."
"Did you?" she faintly answered.
"You must be mine," he continued, in too deep emotion to weigh his words. "If you were to die first, I--I think it would kill me."
"Look at me," was all she answered. "See whether it is possible."
"There's no knowing. It might restore you. Fresh scenes, the warm pure climate that I would take you to--we would find one somewhere--might do wonders. I pointed this out to Sir William in the winter."
"But I have not been well enough for it, Arthur."
"Ellen, it must be! Why, you know that you were almost my wife. Half-an-hour later, and you would have been."