Oswald Cray: A Novel

by Mrs. Henry Wood

"I'll send for a strait waistcoat and put you into that," shrilly cried Miss Bettina in her vexation. "This is a repetition of the childishness of the old days."

"I won't be separated from Mark. Though he has been mistaken and imprudent, he is still my husband. It's a shame that Mr. Welch should want to keep me here! Don't you be so cruel as to side with him, Aunt Bettina."

For once in her life Miss Bettina Davenal lent herself to an evasive compromise. She promised Caroline that she should go back when she was a little stronger, perhaps in two or three days, she said. And it had the desired effect. It soothed away the invalid's dangerous excitement, and she turned round on her pillow and went to sleep quietly.

But as the days went on, and the disease--as the surgeon had foretold--rapidly developed itself, it became plain to Mrs. Cray herself that returning to France was out of the question. And then her tone changed. She no longer prayed in impatient words to be sent: she bewailed in impassioned tones that she must die away from her husband. One day, towards the end of December, it almost seemed that her brain was slightly affected, perhaps from weakness. She started suddenly from the sofa in the drawing-room, where she was reclining, and seized hold of the hands of her aunt in a wild manner.

"O Aunt Bettina! Aunt Bettina! if I had not to go over there to die!"

"Over where?" cried Miss Bettina. "What are you talking of, child?"

"There. Honfleur. If I had not to go! If I could but stop in my own land, among you to the last! It may not be for long!"

Miss Bettina, what with the suddenness of the attack and her own deafness, was bewildered. "I don't hear," she helplessly said.

"They have got two cemeteries, but I'd not like to lie in either," went on Caroline. "Mark won't stop in the town for ever, and there'd be nobody to look at my grave. Aunt, aunt, I can't go over there to die!"

"But you are not going there," returned Miss Bettina, catching the sense of the words. "You must be dreaming, Caroline. You are not going back to Honfleur."