ept again, while Grey
watched her with a great hunger in his heart and a longing to take her
in his arms, and, in spite of a hundred Neils, tell her of his love. How
beautiful she was in that calm sleep, and Grey noted every point of
beauty, from the sheen of her golden hair to the dimpled hand which was
just within his reach.
"Poor little hand," he said, laying his own carefully upon it; "how much
it has done for others. Oh, if I could only call it mine, it should
never know toil again."
He might have raised it to his lips if just then the eyes had not
unclosed, as with a start Bessie awoke and looked wonderingly at him for
an instant; then, instead of withdrawing her hand from his, she held the
other towards him, and raising herself up, cried out:
"Oh, Mr. Jerrold, I am so glad! Nothing is half so dreary now that I
know you are on the ship, and you will tell Neil it was not my fault
that you found me. He may be very angry."
At the mention of Neil a feeling of constraint crept over Grey, and he
quietly released his hands from Bessie's lest he should say to her words
he ought not to say to one who was plighted to another. And Bessie
noticed the change in him, and her lip quivered in a grieved kind of
way, as she said:
"You thought me dead, and you were sorry just a little?"
"Oh, Bessie," and with a mighty effort Grey managed to control himself,
"you will never know how sorry, or how glad I am to find you still
alive; but you must not talk to me now. You must rest, so as to go on
deck and get some strength and some color back to your cheeks. I
promised auntie not to stay long. I will come again by and by."
Drawing the covering around her as deftly as a woman could have done,
he went out and left her alone to wonder at his manner. Bessie had never
forgotten the words spoken to her in Rome, and which she had said he
must never repeat.
Over and over again, at intervals, had sounded in her ears, "I love you
with my whole heart and soul, and whether you live or die you will be
the sweetest memory of my life." She had not died--she had lived; she
had seen him again and found him changed. Perhaps it was better so, she
reasoned, and yet she was conscious of a feeling of disappointment or
loss, though it was such joy to know he was near her, and that, by and
by he would come to her again. And he came after lunch, and the steward
carried her on deck and wrapped her in Miss Grey's warm rug, and Grey
himself sat do
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