assumption of authority, “that I have a full right to command your presence.”
But all excuse for leaving on the ground of propriety was done away with by Mrs. Temple herself coming down to share the labours of nursing.
*****
“Now that you are here, mamma, I should like to leave.”
“Why, Lilian?”
“Because I don’t want what I have done from a sense of duty to be attributed to any other feeling.”
“Oh, Lilian! can you have nursed him as you have, and yet?—well, you may take my word for it, in the state he still is, it will endanger his life if you leave him.”
Lilian burst into tears.
“It is a thousand pities you ever came down—you remember I wished you not to do so, but you would insist. You really ought to have thought of all this before.”
“But I could not let him be ill here, and no one with him if he died, when I was well and strong, and doing nothing in London,” protested Lilian, vehemently.
“I know he loves you very dearly,” continued Mrs. Temple. “Why, as I was sitting at his bedside last evening, he whispered to me that you had saved his life, the doctor had told him so; and then he said, if he had died, Lilian, that you would have had his property—he had made his will before he left town. Why, Lilian, Mr. Simpson himself told me you had done wonders for his patient; and, now, oh, Lilian! do reflect well upon it. I’m sure it will be his death if you reject him.”
Lilian could make no reply, she felt utterly powerless, a very puppet in the hands of a relentless destiny—true, her word was not yet pledged, but all freedom of will was denied her—the time for giving that pledge might be postponed, but come it must.
She continued her attendance in the sick room, assiduous as ever, but she felt that she no longer possessed the power of soothing her cousin as heretofore; by the faintest indications he appeared almost disturbed at her presence. She would sometimes read to him, but she knew that he was not listening to the reading, that he was waiting for her voice to utter other words precious to him.
Mr. Simpson found his patient far less well—“disturbed, irritation throughout the frame; it was a bad symptom, he must be kept perfectly quiet, repose, nothing exciting for the mind.” Mr. Simpson told both mother and daughter this as he left the room. Mrs. Temple accompanied the doctor down stairs to make some further inquiries, Lilian returned to the room. She had gone to the window to draw down the blind, when she heard her cousin calling to her; it flashed through her mind what he was going to say, and shuddering she went to his bedside. She felt utterly miserable, but when she saw how his wasted face was deeply flushed, how his whole frame seemed to quiver, she grew alarmed on his account.
“Dear Frank, do pray be composed—this excitement—”
“Lilian, you never answered that letter of mine.” He spoke louder than was his wont, raising his voice with painful effort. “You have never said you loved me—do you love me, Lilian?”
Could she tell him the truth, and arouse the fever sleeping in his veins? Could she mock his hopeful ears with long explanations of her love for Westby, with miserable excuses? Why, his face was burning before her with eager expectation! Could she ask for further delay before she spoke finally?—and delay and doubt, with their attendant irritation, would be certain death to him.
“Oh, Lilian! do you love me?”
She tottered the few steps to his bed-side.
“I do love you.”
She fell on her knees. It was a horrible lie, and in the thought of that she swooned away.
*****
CONCLUSION.
To have to act out the lie consistently, that was hard work for Lilian; and her cousin’s health seemed to grow out of the affection she showed him—very sunlight to a drooping plant. To have to appear very fond, and yet while he clasped her hand, to find her thoughts wander away to another love; and he would arouse her from these long abstractions, little witting whither her thoughts had fled, and make her turn her face towards him, gazing upon her eyes, which she in shame strove to turn away.
“Lilian, dear,” he said one day, “you are sadly worn by your attendance on me; I can see this illness of mine has greatly over-taxed your strength. I am sure no sacrifice that I can make will ever repay your love and care.”
“No sacrifice!”
He little knew the manner in which she felt his words, though he saw tears in her eyes.
“Well, Lilian, please God I get strong and well, I shall do my best, by the devotion of my life, to show how sensible I am of what you have done for me now.”
Alas! but for that one image stamped upon her heart, how truly she could have loved him. That first impress of love—which she had once believed, nay felt sure, had been entirely effaced by Westby’s severe declaration of contempt for her character—but as the breath restores the old mark invisible on the highly polished steel, so his recent words of love had re-awakened, in all its force, that first feeling which had struck so deeply into her heart.
But she was irrevocably engaged to her cousin now—it would seem almost the ordering of a higher power in opposition to her strongest wishes. Perhaps in time she would see that it was all ordered for the best; there was no thought of evasion in her mind.
It seemed to her necessary to write to Westby to inform him of her engagement; she would feel more at peace when he knew the truth. She consulted her mother on the subject, even begging her mother to write for her, she so dreaded the task.
Mrs. Temple assured Lilian that she did not consider for the present that any letter was
