"You will be sorry for it when I am gone, Frank. Edina!"
"Who is it, Daisy?"
A flush stole into her white cheeks, and the name was whispered so faintly that Frank scarcely caught it.
"Rosaline Bell!" he repeated, gazing at her in doubt and surprise, for the thought crossed him that her senses might be wandering. "But, Daisy, suppose we speak of this to-morrow instead of now," he added as a measure of precaution. "You——"
"We will speak of it now, or never," she interrupted, as vehemently as any one can speak whose strength is at the lowest ebb. And the sudden anger Frank's words caused her—for she deemed he was acting altogether a deceitful part and dared not speak—nerved her to tell out her grievances more fully than she might otherwise have had courage to do. Frank listened to the accusation with apparent equanimity; to the long line of disloyal conduct he had been indulging in since the early days at Trennach down to the present hour. His simple attempt at refutation made no impression whatever: the belief was too long and firmly rooted in her mind to be quickly dispelled.
"I could have borne any trial better than this," concluded she, with laboured breathing: "all our misfortunes would have been as nothing to me in comparison. Don't say any more, please. Perhaps she will feel some remorse when she hears I am dead."
"We will let it drop now then, Daisy," assented Frank. "But I have had no more thought of Rosaline than of the man in the moon."
"Will you go away now, please, and send the nurse in?"
"What on earth is to be done?" thought Frank, doing as he was ordered. "With this wretched fancy hanging over her, she may never get well; never. Mental worry in these critical cases sometimes means death."
"How is she now?" asked Edina, meeting him on the stairs.