But not even that determined will of his could shake off the illness that was creeping over him, and one night when Nea returned from a brilliant réunion she found Belgrave House a second time in confusion. Mr. Huntingdon had been taken suddenly ill, and Dr. Ainslie was in attendance.
By and by a nurse arrived—a certain bright-eyed little Sister Teresa—and took charge of the sick man. After the first few days of absolute danger, during which he had been tolerably submissive, Mr. Huntingdon had desired that he should be kept informed of all matters connected with an important lawsuit of his at present pending; and during the tedious weeks of convalescence Maurice Trafford carried the daily report to Belgrave House. It seemed as though fate were conspiring against him; every day he saw Nea, and every day her presence grew more perilously sweet to him.
She had a thousand innocent pretexts for detaining him, little girlish coquetries which she did not employ in vain. She would ask him about her father, or beg him to tell her about the tiresome lawsuit, or show him her birds and flowers, anything, in fact, that her caprice could devise to keep him beside her for a moment; very often they met in her father’s room, or Mr. Huntingdon would give orders that Mr. Trafford should stay to luncheon.
Nea, in her blindness, thought she was only amusing herself with an idle fancy, a girl’s foolish partiality for a face that seemed almost perfect in her eyes; she little thought that she was playing a dangerous game, that the time was fast approaching when she would find her fancy a sorrowful reality.
Day by day those stolen moments became more perilous in their sweetness; and one morning Nea woke up to the conviction that Maurice Trafford loved her, that he was everything to her, and that she would rather die than live without him.
It was one afternoon, and they were together in the drawing-room. Maurice had come late that day, and a violent storm had set in, and Mr. Huntingdon had sent down word that Mr. Trafford had better wait until it was over. To do Mr. Huntingdon justice, he had no idea his daughter was in the house; she had gone out to luncheon, and he had not heard of her return.
The heavy velvet curtains had been drawn to shut out the dreary scene, and only the fire-light lit up the room; Nea, sitting in her favorite low chair, with her feet on the white rug, was looking up at Maurice, who stood leaning against the mantel-piece talking to her.
He was telling her about his father’s early death, and of the sweet-faced mother who had not long survived him; of his own struggles and poverty, of his lonely life, his efforts to follow his parents’ example. Nea listened to him in silence; but once he paused, and the words seemed to die on his lips. He had never seen her look like that before; she was trembling, her face was pale, and her eyes were wet with tears; and then, how it happened neither of them could tell, but Maurice knew that he loved her—knew that Nea loved him—and was holding her to his heart as though he could never let her go.
CHAPTER IX.
THE AWAKENING.
That thrilling, solemn, proud, pathetic voice,