‘I hope so, miss—I hope so. Some day, we shall all know.’
‘Don’t try to talk too much.’
For a while she lay back, her face, with its bright hectic flush, marked out in painful contrast to the white pillow. Eleanor watched her with a look of infinite pity and tenderness. The distant hum of busy Holborn came with dull force into the room, and the heavy rain beat upon the windows like a mournful dirge. The little American clock on the mantel-shelf was the only sound, save the dry painful cough, which ever and anon proceeded from the dying woman’s lips. The night sped on; the sullen roar of the distant traffic grew less and less; the wind dropped, and the girl’s hard breathing could be heard painfully and distinctly. Presently, a change came over her face—a kind of bright, almost unearthly intelligence.
‘Are you in any pain, Madge?’ Eleanor asked with pitying air.
‘How much lighter it is!’ said the dying girl. ‘My head is quite clear now, miss, and all the pain has gone.—Miss Nelly, I have been dreaming of the old home. Do you remember how we used to sit by the old fountain under the weeping-ash, and wonder what our fortunes would be? I little thought it would come to this.—Tell me, miss, are you in—in want?’
‘Not exactly, Madge; but the struggle is hard sometimes.’
‘I thought so,’ the dying girl continued. ‘I would have helped you after she came; but you know the power she had over your poor uncle, a power that increased daily. She used to frighten me. I tremble now when I think of her.’
‘Don’t think of her,’ said Eleanor soothingly. ‘Try and rest a little, and not talk. It cannot be good for you.’
The sufferer smiled painfully, and a terrible fit of coughing shook her frame. When she recovered, she continued: ‘It is no use, Miss Nelly: all the rest and all your kind nursing cannot save me now. I used to wonder, when you left Eastwood so suddenly, why you did not take me; but now I know it is all for the best. Until the very last, I stayed in the house.’
‘And did not my uncle give you any message, any letter for me?’ asked Eleanor, with an eagerness she could not conceal.