Lady Dudgeon's feelings just now were of a very mixed kind. Her affection for the girl, the growth of long years, struggled with her very natural vexation at finding how thoroughly she had been hoodwinked, how completely she had been ignored in the matter by everybody. On the other hand, there was a spice of romance about the affair that appealed to some hidden feeling, of whose existence she herself was hardly aware.
"Child! child!" she said in an aside to Eleanor, "if you had but given me your confidence! Two paupers! What are you to do? How are you to live? It's dreadful to contemplate!"
Kelvin's cheeks flushed as he listened to Gerald's words. He set his teeth and glared savagely out of his hollow eyes at his successful rival. Was it for this that he had humiliated himself by his recent confession? What a fool he had been to acknowledge so much before all these people! This mere adventurer had carried away the prize for which he had striven so boldly and sacrificed so much. Bitter indeed were his thoughts just then. The emotion was too much for his strength, and he fainted.
Olive was by his side in a moment, but Dr. Whitaker spoke sternly to her.
"Stand back, if you please," he said. "I will attend to Mr. Kelvin."
She flashed a look of hate and defiance at him. Her overwrought feelings could contain themselves no longer.
"I will not stand back," she said, speaking in her clear incisive way. "Who has more right by my cousin's side than I, who have nursed him through his long illness?"
Dr. Whitaker did not answer. He was trying to bring back his patient to consciousness. Olive sank down at her cousin's knees, and took his cold hand in hers and pressed it to her lips.
In a little while Matthew Kelvin opened his eyes and looked feebly round, as if striving to bring to memory where he was, and whose were the faces that were bent over him. Last of all, his eyes met those of Olive Deane, and with a flash, as it were, everything came back to him. Then he saw whose hand it was that was holding his. With a look of loathing and hate that almost killed the soul within her, he flung Olive's hand from him, and, trembling in every limb, he staggered to his feet.
"Poisoner!--begone! Quit my sight for ever!" he cried; and then he fell back into his chair.