Then Dr. Huger rose to go. To-morrow, perhaps he could combat those scruples of hers; but to-day, there was no more to be said to this woman whom another man owned. To-morrow, he could tell better how nearly he could return to the quiet ways of friendship,—whether it would be possible for him to tend her, brother-like, to the last, as he had meant to do before he loved her. He took her hand a moment, and said, in a tone which he tried so hard to make quiet that it almost sounded cold,—
"I must go now. I dare not stay and talk to you. I will come again to-morrow."
"Yes, to-morrow."
Her face kindled, as she spoke, with a strange light as of prophecy. What "to-morrow" meant to her he did not know. He turned away suddenly, for his heart was sore; and, as he went, he heard her say, speaking very low and tenderly,—
"God bless you, Francis Huger."
The next day he went again to Rock Cottage. He had fought his battle and conquered. He thought now that he could stay by her to the end, and speak no word, look no look, which should wrong her honor or his own. He asked for her at the door as usual; and they told him she had paid her bill that morning, and left. She had come, they said, no one knew from whence; and no one knew where she had gone. She had left no messages and given no address.
Dr. Huger understood that this was something she had meant to keep secret from him of all others. Was he never to see her again? When she had said, "Yes, to-morrow," could she have meant the long to-morrow, when the night of death should be over? He turned away, making no sign of disappointment,—his sorrow dumb in his heart; and, as he went, her voice seemed again to follow him,—
"God bless you, Francis Huger."
For two months afterward, he went the round of his daily duties in a strange, absent, divided fashion. He neither forgot nor omitted anything; yet he saw as one who saw not, and heard with a hearing which conveyed to his inward sense no impression. She was with him everywhere. All the time, he was living over the brief four weeks of their acquaintance, in which, it seemed to him, he had suffered and enjoyed more than in all the rest of his lifetime. Every day, every hour, he expected some message from her. He felt a sort of conviction that she would not die until he had seen her again. He thought, at last, that his summons to her side had come. He opened, one day, a letter directed in a hand with which he was not familiar. He read in it, with hurrying pulses, only these words:—
"Madame Pauline Angereau Colchester is dead. I obey her wish in sending you these tidings."
"Lisette."