"What!" exclaimed Max viciously. "Bai Jove, you don't mean that!"

"I mean, sir," said the doctor seriously, "that your lady is in a dangerous state, and I would not answer for her life if she were moved.

I'll do my best, and we must be hopeful for what is to follow."

"Bai Jove!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Max, as he left the room; and sympathising hands were soon busy with the insensible form.

"Mrs Williams, eh?" said the doctor to himself, as he superintended a portion of the arrangements; and then left to get some medicine made up.

"Mrs Williams, eh? But, poor child, she does not travel in her wedding-ring!"

Volume 3, Chapter XVIII.

AN OVERTAXED BRAIN.

"It was dooced unfortunate, bai Jove!" Max Bray said to himself, as he sat over his dinner at the snug little hotel at the end of the third day. He could not think what the foolish girl wanted to excite herself for to such an extent. It was absurd, "bai Jove, it was!" But his plan had answered all the same, and he'd wait till she got well, if it were a month first--he would, "bai Jove!" She'd come round then, with a little quiet talking to; and, after all, they were snug and out of sight in the little town, and n.o.body knew them, nor was likely to know them, that was the beauty of it. Certainly he could not get his letters; but that did not matter: they were sure to be all dunning affairs, and he'd not the slightest wish to have them. The only thing he regretted was not hearing from Laura.

One thing, he said, was very evident--Ella must have been ill when they started, or this attack would never have come on so suddenly.

And all this while, burning with fever, Ella Bedford lay delirious, and with a nurse at her bedside night and day. The doctor was unremitting in his attention, and was undoubtedly skilful; but he soon found that all he could do was to palliate, for the disease would run its course.

The place they were in was fortunately kept by a quiet old couple, whose sympathies were aroused by the sufferings of the gentle girl; and though, as a rule, sick visitors are not welcomed very warmly at hotels, here Ella met with almost motherly treatment.

Doctor, nurse, landlady--all had their suspicions; but the ravings of a fever-stricken girl were not sufficient warranty for them to do more than patiently watch the progress of events, and at times they antic.i.p.ated that the end would be one that they could not but deplore.

For Ella indeed seemed sick unto death, and lay tossing her fevered head on the pillow, or struggled to get away to give the help that she said was needed of her.

"Hasten on, hasten on!" Those words were always ringing in her ears, and troubling her; and then she would start up in bed, press her long glorious hair back from her burning temples, and listen as if called.

Then would come a change, and she would be talking to an imaginary flower, as she plucked its petals out one by one, calling each petal a hope or aspiration; whispering too, at times, in a voice so low that it was never heard by those who bent over her, what seemed to be a name, while a smile of ineffable joy swept over her lips as she spoke.

Once more, though, those words, "Hasten on, hasten on!" repeated incessantly as she struggled to free herself from the hands that held her to her bed.

"Let me go to him," she whispered softly once to her nurse. "He is dying, and he calls me. Let me see him once, only for a few minutes, that I may tell him how I loved him, before he goes. Please let me go!"

she said pitifully, clasping her hands together; "just to see him once, and then I will go away--far away--and try to be at peace."

"My poor child, yes," sobbed the landlady. "I fear you will, and very soon too. But does she want him from downstairs? I'll go and fetch him up."

The landlady descended, to find Max, as usual, smoking, and told him of what had pa.s.sed.

"Bai Jove, no! I won't come up, thanks. I'm nervous, and have a great dread of infection, and that sort of thing."

"But 'tisn't an infectious disorder, sir," said the landlady; "and I'm afraid, sir, that if you don't come now--"

"Eh, what? I say, bai Jove, you don't mean that it's serious!"

exclaimed Max excitedly. "There's no danger of _that_, is there?"

The landlady smoothed down her ap.r.o.n with a solemn look in her face; then left the room, with genuine tears of sorrow stealing down her cheeks.

"Poor young creature!" she sighed. "Such a mere girl too!"

And then she hurried back to the sick-chamber, to find Ella lying back in a state of exhaustion.

Another day, another, and another, with life seeming to hang as by a thread; while Max, strictly avoiding the sick-chamber, waited anxiously for the result; for this was an accident upon which, with all his foresight, he had not calculated. But he could obtain no comfort from doctor or nurse. Their looks grew more and more ominous, and at last he began to calculate upon what would be his position, should the worst come to the worst. Certainly, he had by deception--a stratagem, he termed it--induced Ella Bedford to place herself under his protection, and if she died it would be in the doctor's hands. There would be no coroner's inquest, and the law could not touch him. And besides, she had no relatives to call him to account, while surely--he smiled gravely as he thought it--_his brother-in-law_ would say nothing!

But all the same, in his heart of hearts Max Bray knew that, if Ella died, he would be morally guilty of her murder.

That last was an ugly word, but it insisted upon being spoken, to afterwards ring again and again in his ears as he restlessly moved in his seat.

But now a change had taken place in Ella's state. From the soft appealing prayer for leave to go and answer the calls she fancied that she heard, she now became fiercely excited, moved by a dread of pursuit, and shrinking from every one who approached her. She would even wildly inveigh against the doctor, whom she accused of being in the pay of Max to drag her away.

No more soft appeals now, but frantic shrieks and fierce struggles for freedom.

Again and again those who watched found that she had taken advantage of a few minutes' absence to dress hurriedly, when it was only by a gentle application of force that she could be overcome.

Then came the time when she seemed to have fallen into a weak and helpless state, lying day after day apparently devoid of sense and feeling.

Max was asked again and again whether he would see her; but he invariably refused with a coward's shiver of dread, to the great disgust of all who had taken interest in the poor girl's state.

"I declare, it's scandalous!" said the landlady in confidence to her husband. "He seems to neither know nor care how she is. No relatives are sent to, he has no letters; and it's my belief there's more than we know hanging to this."

"'Tisn't our business to interfere," said the landlord. "He pays like a gentleman, if he isn't one; and if we get our living by visitors, it isn't for us to be playing the spy upon them."

The landlady did not say anything, but she evidently thought a great deal. The doctor, too, had his opinion upon the subject, but he was silent, and tended his patient to the best of his ability, shaking his head when questioned as to her recovery.

Volume 3, Chapter XIX.

THE NET BREAKS.

There is a boundary even to human patience; and now, after many days, Max Bray began to find his position very irksome. There was every probability of Ella's being a long and tedious illness, succeeded by a very slow return to convalescence; and he sat, at length, one day thinking matters over, for he was thoroughly tired out. There were no amus.e.m.e.nts in the place, and not wishing to attract curiosity, he had kept himself closely within doors. It was tiresome to a degree, and, besides, his stock of money would not last for ever. Come what might, he felt that he could put up with his position no longer. To a great extent his stratagem had been successful; but this unforeseen illness had made it now a failure, and he might as well give up and go to London. It had been expensive certainly; but though he was a loser, some one else would gain enormously; and he grinned again and again as he softly rubbed his white hands together, and thought of what a banker that some one would in the future prove. She would never be able to refuse him money, however extravagant he might be, and fortunately the Vinings were enormously wealthy. "But, bai Jove!" said Max Bray half aloud, "what a sweet thing is love between brother and sister!"

Then Mr Maximilian Bray began to make his plans for the future. He told himself that time enough had elapsed; that he need not certainly give up Ella, but arrange with the landlord that he should be informed directly she was getting better, and then he could come down again--that could be easily managed--and he really was tired out of this. He also made a few other plans; building, too, a few more castles in the air, ending with the determination of going up to town by the first train in the morning, and getting to know how Laura's affair was progressing.

"At all events, her way's clear," said Max, "and, bai Jove, she shall pay me for it by and by."

"_L'homme propose, mais Dieu dispose_." Max Bray arranged all future matters to his entire satisfaction, but again there were contingencies that he could not foresee. Sitting there, rolling his cigar in his mouth and reckoning how long it would be to lunch, he had made up his mind to dine the next day at his club; but he did not; neither did other matters turn out quite so satisfactorily as he wished.

The sojourn was at a quiet little hotel in a Gloucestershire town that it is unnecessary to name; suffice it if we say that, save on the weekly market-day, the streets, with two exceptions, were silent and deserted; the two exceptions being the time when the children were set free from the National Schools. Hence, then, any little noise or excitement was unusual, and it was no wonder that Max Bray was startled by a scream above stairs, a cry for help, and the trampling of feet; sounds which his coward heart soon interpreted for him to mean an awful termination to his "stratagem," when, rising hurriedly to his feet, he stood there resting one hand upon the table, and the cold perspiration standing in great drops upon his pallid face.

There were people coming towards his room--they were coming to tell him.

"What of it, then?" he cried savagely. "Could he help it? Had no doctor been obtained? It was her own mad excitement led to this termination."

"O, sir! O, sir!" exclaimed the landlady, bursting tearful-eyed into the room, "your poor, dear, sweet lady!"

"Dead?" asked Max in a harsh whisper, his knees shaking beneath him as he spoke.

"No, sir, not dead. I only left her for a few minutes, and when I came back--"

"Well, what? Speak, woman!" cried Max fiercely.

"She was gone, sir."