if
it might be, as she said, when it is warm and light!--if it might be!"
She stopped with a catching in her voice.

Harry, in his matter-of-fact way, offered consolation: "Dear Mrs.
Middleton, the sun will rise by four, and Greenwell says there won't be
any wind."

"Yes, yes! And she may not remember."

"I hope you have been taking some rest," he ventured to say after a
brief silence.

"Yes. I was lying down this afternoon, and Sarah will take part of the
night." She paused, and spoke again in a still lower tone: "Couldn't you
persuade him to go away?"

"Mr. Thorne?"

She nodded: "I will not have her troubled. I asked her if she would see
him again, and she said, 'No.' I wish he would go. What is the use of
his waiting there?"

Hardwicke shrugged his shoulders: "It is useless for me to try and
persuade him. He won't stir for me."

"I would send for him if she wanted him. But she won't."

"I'll speak to him again if you like," said Harry, "though it won't do
any good."

Nor did it when a few minutes later the promised attempt was made. "I
shall stay here," said Percival in a tone which conveyed unconquerable
decision, and Hardwicke was silenced. The Greenwells came later,
regretting that they had not a room to offer Mr. Thorne, but suggesting
the sofa in the parlor or a mattress on the floor somewhere. Percival,
however, declined everything with such courteous resolution that at last
he was left alone.

Again the night came on, with its shadows and its stillness, and the
light burning steadily in the one room. To all outward seeming it was
the same as it had been twenty-four hours earlier, but Mrs. Middleton,
watching by the bedside, was conscious of a difference. Life was at a
lower ebb: there was less eagerness and unrest, less of hope and fear,
more of a drowsy acquiescence. And Percival, who had been longed for so
wearily the night before, seemed to be altogether forgotten.

Meanwhile, he kept his weary watch outside. He said to himself that he
had darkened Sissy's last day: he cursed his cruelty, and yet could he
have done otherwise? He was haunted through the long hours of the night
by the words which had been ever on his lips when he won her--

If she love me, this believe,
I will die ere she shall grieve;

and he vowed that never was man so forsworn as he. Yet his one desire
had been to be true. Had he not worshipped Truth? And this was the end
of all.

His cruelty, too, had been worse