"He will come by the next train."
She took his hand, held it between hers, and looked beseechingly up to
his face. "I don't want to leave you," she whispered. "Oh, Lionel! keep
me here if you can! You know you are always kind to me. Sometimes I have
reproached you that you were not, but it was not true. You have been
ever kind, have you not?"
"I have ever striven to be so," he answered, the tears glistening on his
eyelashes.
"I don't want to die. I want to get well and go about again, as I used
to do when at Verner's Pride. Now Sir Edmund Hautley is come home, that
will be a good place to visit at. Lionel, I don't want to die! _Can't_
you keep me in life?"
"If by sacrificing my own life, I could save yours, Heaven knows how
willingly I would do it," he tenderly answered.
"Why should I die? Why should I die more than others? I don't think I am
dying, Lionel," she added, after a pause. "I shall get well yet."
She stretched out her hand for some cooling drink that was near, and
Lionel gave her a teaspoonful. He was giving her another, but she jerked
her head away and spilled it.
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