“And your sister nursing her,” said Arthur. “How extraordinary!”
Notwithstanding his surprise, however, Lilias could see that the idea of the thing was not unpleasing to him.
“But for that—but for Mary’s being with her, you and I would not have met this morning,” she said.
“You may go further and say that but for Alys’s accident I should not have been here,” said Arthur, while a shade fell over his sunny countenance. “It is too cold for you standing here. Let us walk on a little.”
“Are you not going to the farm?” Lilias asked.
“No. Now that I have seen you I shall hurry back the way I came. You have told me all there is to hear. Poor Alys! Lilias, I wish I could explain to you why I felt so horribly, so unbearably anxious about her. I am very fond of her; but once lately when I was nearly beside myself with perplexity and misery, Laurence—her brother, you know—to bring me to what he would call my senses, I suppose, said something which has haunted me ever since I heard of her accident yesterday morning. If she had been killed I should have felt as if I had killed her.”
He looked at Lilias, with a self-reproach and distress in his open boyish face which touched her greatly—the more as, now that the brightness had for the moment faded out of his countenance, she could see how much changed he was, how thin and pale and worn he looked.
“I think I can understand—a very little,” she said, gently, “without your explaining. But you have grown morbid, Arthur. You know you would suffer anything yourself rather than wish injury to any one.”
“I suppose I have grown morbid,” he said. “Morbid for want of hope, and still more from the constant horrible dread of what you must be thinking of me. I shall not know myself when I get back to C. I may have dark fits of blaming myself for involving you in my misfortunes—but then to know that you trust me again! Surely, whatever the world might say, I have not done wrong, Lilias? To you, I mean?”
“You have given me back my life, and youth, and faith and everything good,” she replied. “Can that be doing me wrong?”