"I would send for him if she wanted him. But she won't."
"I'll speak to him again if you like," said Harry, "though it won't do any good."
Nor did it when a few minutes later the promised attempt was made. "I shall stay here," said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later, regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival, however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at last he was left alone.
Again the night came on, with its shadows and its stillness, and the light burning steadily in the one room. To all outward seeming it was the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but Mrs. Middleton, watching by the bedside, was conscious of a difference. Life was at a lower ebb: there was less eagerness and unrest, less of hope and fear, more of a drowsy acquiescence. And Percival, who had been longed for so wearily the night before, seemed to be altogether forgotten.
Meanwhile, he kept his weary watch outside. He said to himself that he had darkened Sissy's last day: he cursed his cruelty, and yet could he have done otherwise? He was haunted through the long hours of the night by the words which had been ever on his lips when he won her—
If she love me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve;
and he vowed that never was man so forsworn as he. Yet his one desire had been to be true. Had he not worshipped Truth? And this was the end of all.
His cruelty, too, had been worse than useless. He had lost this chance of an independence, as he had lost Brackenhill. He hated himself for thinking of money then, yet he could not help thinking of it—could not help being aware that Sissy's entreaty to him to take her fortune was worth nothing unless a will were made, and that there had been no mention of such a thing since she spoke to him that morning. And he was so miserably poor! Of whom should he borrow the money to take him back to his drudgery at Brenthill? Well, since Sissy no longer cared for his future, it was well that he had spoken. Better poverty than treachery. Let the money go; but, oh, to see her once again and ask her to forgive him!
As the night crept onward he grew drowsy and slept by snatches, lightly and uneasily, waking with sudden starts to a consciousness of the window at his side—a loophole into a ghostly sky where shreds of white cloud were driven swiftly before the breeze. The wan crescent of the moon gleamed through them from time to time, showing how thin and phantom-like they were, and how they hurried on their way across the heavens. After a time the clouds and moon and midnight sky were mingled with Percival's dreams, and toward morning he fell fast asleep.
Again Aunt Harriet saw the first gray gleam of dawn. Slowly it stole in, widening and increasing, till the candle-flame, which had been like a golden star shining out into the June night, was but a smoky yellow smear on the saffron morning. She rose and put it out. Turning, she encountered Sissy's eyes. They looked from her to a window at the foot of the bed. "Open," said Sissy.