"Will you give me what I ventured to ask for?" said he gently,--"the permission to work for you? Do not trouble those precious lips to speak--the answer of these fingers will be as sure a warrant to me as all words that could be spoken that you do not deny my request."
He had taken one of her hands in his own. But the fingers lay with unanswering coldness and lifelessness for a second in his clasp and then were drawn away and took determinate hold of the chair-back. Again the flush came to Fleda's cheeks, brought by a sharp pain,--oh, bodily and mental too!--and after a moment's pause, with a distinctness of utterance that let him know every word, she said,
"A generous man would not ask it, sir."
Thorn sprang up, and several times paced the length of the room, up and down, before he said anything more. He looked at Fleda, but the flush was gone again, and nothing could seem less conscious of his presence. Pain and patience were in every line of her face, but he could read nothing more, except a calmness as unmistakably written. Thorn gave that face repeated glances as he walked, then stood still and read it at leisure. Then he came to her side again and spoke in a different voice.
"You are so unlike anybody else," he said, "that you shall make me unlike myself. I will do freely what I hoped to do with the light of your smile before me. You shall hear no more of this affair, neither you nor the world--I have the matter perfectly in my own hands--it shall never raise a whisper again. I will move heaven and earth rather than fail--but there is no danger of my failing. I will try to prove myself worthy of your esteem even where a man is most excusable for being selfish."
Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again put in use.
He took one of her cold hands again,--Fleda could not help it without more force than she cared to use, and indeed pain would by this time almost have swallowed up other sensation if every word and touch had not sent it in a stronger throb to her very finger ends. Thorn bent his lips to her hand, twice kissed it fervently, and then left her; much to King's satisfaction, who thereupon resigned himself to quiet slumbers.
His mistress knew no such relief. Excitement had dreadfully aggravated her disorder, at a time when it was needful to banish even thought as far as possible. Pain effectually banished it now, and Barby coming in a little after Mr. Thorn had gone found her quite unable to speak and scarce able to breathe, from agony. Barby's energies and fainting remedies were again put in use; but pain reigned triumphant for hours, and when its hard rule was at last abated Fleda was able to do nothing but sleep like a child for hours more.
Towards a late tea-time she was at last awake, and carrying on a very one-sided conversation with Rolf, her own lips being called upon for little more than a smile now and then. King, not able to be in her lap, had curled himself up upon a piece of his mistress's dress and as close within the circle of her arms as possible, where Fleda's hand and his head were on terms of mutual satisfaction.