im in dismay
while he kissed her hands with desperate, overwhelming love. What was
she to do? Lady Shuttleworth tried to draw her away. What was she to
do? If Tussie was overwhelmed with love, she was overwhelmed with
pity.

"Ethel--Ethel--" gasped Tussie, kissing her hands, looking up at her,
kissing them again.

Pity overcame her, engulfed her. She bent her head down to his and
laid her cheek an instant on the absurd flannel nightingale, tenderly,
apologetically.

"Ethel--Ethel," choked Tussie, "will you marry me?"

"Dear Tussie," she whispered in a shaky whisper, "I promise to answer
you when you are well. Not yet. Not now. Get quite well, and then if
you still want an answer I promise to give you one. Now let me go."

"Ethel," implored Tussie, looking at her with a wild entreaty in his
eyes, "will you kiss me? Just once--to help me to live--"

And in her desire to comfort him she stooped down again and did kiss
him, soberly, almost gingerly, on the forehead.

He let her hands slide away from between his and lay back on his
pillows in a state for the moment of absolute beatitude. He shut his
eyes, and did not move while she crept softly out of the room.

"What have you done?" asked Lady Shuttleworth trembling, when they
were safely in the passage and the door shut behind them.

"I can't think--I can't think," groaned Priscilla, wringing her hands.
And, leaning against the balusters, then and there in that most
public situation she began very bitterly to cry.

XIX

Priscilla went home dazed. All her suitors hitherto had approached her
ceremoniously, timidly, through the Grand Duke; and we know they had
not approached very near. But here was one, timid enough in health,
who was positively reckless under circumstances that made most people
meek. He had proposed to her arrayed in a blue flannel nightingale,
and Priscilla felt that headlong self-effacement could go no further.
"He must have a great soul," she said to herself over and over again
during the drive home, "a great, _great_ soul." And it seemed of
little use wiping her tears away, so many fresh ones immediately took
their place.

She ached over Tussie and Tussie's mother. What had she done? She felt
she had done wrong; yet how, except by just existing? and she did feel
she couldn't help doing that. Certainly she had made two kind hearts
extremely miserable,--one was miserable now, and the other didn't yet
know how miserable it was going