As soon as breakfast was over, the next morning, as the day was fair, Hilary resolved to drive over to the station at South Point, and see whether any thing more was required for the
sufferer there. Nest begged to go too; full of excitement and interest on the occasion.
It was a very lonely place; the small public house, into which the stranger had been carried, stood low down on the beach, beneath high, beetling rocks, above which was the preventive station, and it seemed only fit to be the resort of fishers, or men of the same class. Mrs. Hepburn and her sister, on entering found only the hostess below, and desiring Nest to remain with her, the elder made her way up the steep, ladder-like steps to a room above, where her brother was nursing the sick man.
The door and the window were both open, and the pleasant breeze streamed in with the morning sunbeams, which fell on Hilary as she stood contemplating the couple within the room. Her brother was sitting beside the bed, holding the hand of his patient, but his back was to the door.
Supported by pillows, and evidently laboring for breath, the sick man lay with his face toward her; but as his eyes were closed, he was not aware of her presence. The flush of fever was on his cheek, the contraction of pain on his brow; his countenance seemed the home of sad unquiet thoughts; a thick curled beard and moustache of dark auburn concealed the lower part of his face, while a bandage across his forehead gave a more ghastly expression to his sunken eyes. Yet even in those worn and pain-struck features, she thought she recognized a something familiar, a something which sent her memory back to her girlhood and her forest-home. He slowly opened his eyes, and said, in a low, feeble voice—
“Maurice, I should like to see—Hilary!” added he, in a tone of wild surprise, starting from his pillows, as his eyes fell on her. The effort was too much, he sank back, overpowered by weakness, while shadows of agony and terror seemed to cross his face.
“My mind wanders,” said he, placing his hand over his brow; “Maurice, I thought I saw your sister—just as she was in the forest—the first time we met.”
No wonder he was thus deluded; for as she stood there, with
the glow on her cheek from the fresh morning air, with her brown hair smoothly parted on her forehead, her simple bonnet, and plain black dress, she looked so calm, so youthful, so like the Hilary of his happiest hours, he could hardly suppose her a reality; could years have made so little change in her, so much in himself?
She approached, and placed her fingers on the only hand he had at liberty; the other lay helpless by his side.