"But, Bertie, what was the matter with you?"
"I hardly know. It's all over now. My heart seemed to stop beating just for a moment. I wonder if it did, really? Or should I have died? Do sit down, Judith. You look as if you were going to faint too."
She sat down by him. After a minute Bertie's slim, long fingers groped restlessly, and she held them in a tender grasp. So for some time they remained hand in hand. Judith watched him furtively as he lay with closed eyes, his fair boyish face pressed on the dingy cushion, and a great tenderness lighted her quiet glance. Suddenly, Bertie's eyes opened and met hers. She answered his look of inquiry: "You are all I have, dear. We two are alone, are we not? I must be anxious if you are ill."
He pressed her hand, but he turned his face a little away, conscious at the same moment of a flush of self-reproach and of a lurking smile. "Don't!" he said. "I'm not ill. I'm all right now—never better. Isn't it time for me to be off? I say, my dear girl, if you don't look sharp you'll be late at St. Andrew's."
"St. Andrew's!" she repeated scornfully. "I go to St. Andrew's now, and think all the service through that my bad boy may be fainting at St. Sylvester's! No, no: I shall go with you."
"Thank you," said Bertie, sitting up and running his fingers through his hair by way of preparation for church. "I shall be glad, if you don't mind."
"That is," she went on, "if you are fit to go at all."
"Oh yes. I couldn't leave old Clifton in the lurch for anything short of sudden death, and even then he'd feel himself ill used. Stay at home because I felt faint? It would be as much as my place is worth," said Bertie with a smile of which Judith could not understand the fine irony.
"I'll go and get ready," she said. But she went to the door of Percival's sitting-room and knocked.
"Come in," he answered, and she opened it. He was stooping over his fire, poker in hand. She paused on the threshold, and, after breaking a hard lump of coal, he looked over his shoulder: "Miss Lisle! I beg your pardon. I thought they had come for the breakfast things."