She was so wearied with her watching and excitement, that her grief wore itself away into silence and exhausted quiet. She did not raise her head, but let it rest upon her arms as she knelt, and before many minutes had passed, her eyes closed with utter weariness.
She awoke with a start, half an hour later. Some one was standing near her. It had been twilight when she fell asleep, and now the room was so gray, that
she could barely distinguish who it was. A soft, thick shawl had been dropped over her, evidently by the person in question. When Theo's eyes became accustomed to the shadows, she recognized the erect, slender figure and handsome head. It was Priscilla Gower, and Priscilla Gower was leaning against the window, and looking down at her fixedly.
"You were cold when I found you," were her first words, "and so I threw my shawl around you. You ought not to have gone to sleep there."
"I fell asleep before I knew that I was tired," said Theo. "Thank you, Miss Gower."
There was a pause of a moment, before she summoned courage to speak again.
"I have not had time yet," she hesitated, at last, "to ask you how Miss Elizabeth is. I hope she is well?"
"I am sorry to say she is not," Priscilla replied. "If she had been well, she would have accompanied me here. She has been very weak of late. It was on that account that I applied to your sister when the doctor's letter told me I was needed."
"I have been expecting Lady Throckmorton for so long, that I am afraid something has gone wrong," said Theo.
To this remark, Priscilla made no reply. She was never prone to be communicative regarding Lady Throckmorton. But she had come here to say something to Theodora North, and at last she said it.
"You have been here how long?" she asked, suddenly.
"Nearly a week," said Theo.
"Is Mr. Oglethorpe better, or worse, than when you saw him first?"
"I do not know exactly," answered the low, humble voice. "Sometimes better though I do not think he is ever much worse."
Another pause, and then:
"You were very brave to come so far alone."
The beautiful, dark, inconsistently, un-English face was uplifted all at once, but the next moment it dropped with a sob of actual anguish.
"Oh, Miss Gower!" the girl cried. "Don't blame me; please don't blame me. There was no one else, and the telegram said he was dying."
"Hush," said Priscilla Gower, with an inexplicable softness in her tone. "I don't blame you; I should have done the same thing in your place."
"But you " began Theo, faintly.
Priscilla stopped her before she had time to finish her sentence; stopped her with a cold, clear, steady voice.
"No," she said. "You are making a mistake."
What this brief speech meant, she did not explain; but she evidently had understood what Theodora was going to say, and had not wished to hear it.
But brief speech as it was, its brevity held a swift pang of new fear for Theo. She could not quite comprehend its exact meaning, but it struck a fresh dread to her heart. Could it be that she knew the truth, and was going to punish him? Could she be cruel enough to think of reproaching him at such an hour as this, when he lay at death's door? Some frantic idea of falling at her stern feet and pleading for him rushed into her mind. But the next moment, glancing up at the erect, motionless figure, she became dimly conscious of something that quieted her, she scarcely knew how.
The dim room was so quiet, too; there was so deep a stillness upon the whole place, it seemed that she gained a touch of courage for the instant. Priscilla was not looking at her now; her statuesque face was turned toward the wide expanse of landscape, fast dying out, as it were, in the twilight grayness. Theo's eyes rested on her for a few minutes in a remorseful pity for, and a mute yearning toward this woman whom she had so bitterly, yet so unconsciously wronged. She would not wrong her more deeply still; the wrong should end just as she had thought it had ended, when Denis dropped her hand and left her standing alone before the fire that last night in Paris. This resolve rose up in her mind with a power so overwhelming, that it carried before it all the past of rebellion, and pain, and love. She would go away before he knew that she had been with him at all. She would herself be the means of bringing to pass the end she had only so short a time ago rebelled against so passionately. He should think it was his promised wife who had been with him from the first. She would make Priscilla promise that it should be so. Having resolved this, her new courage courage, though it was so full of desperate, heart-sick pain, helped her to ask a question bearing upon her thoughts. She touched the motionless figure with her hand.
"Did Pamela come here to bring me away?" she asked.
Priscilla Gower turned, half starting, as though from a reverie.
"What did you say?" she said.
"Did Pamela come to take me away from here?" Theo repeated.
"No," she said. "Do not be afraid of that."