Gray, for I know you, though I never--met you until--last night. God bless you--God bless you!"
She wavered a moment, like a lily in the wind, and put out a hand blindly.
"Not you!" she said sharply, as Tom Vanrevel started toward her. Mrs.
Tanberry came quickly and put an arm about her, and together they went out of the room.
"You must be good to her, Tom," said Crailey then, in a very low voice.
"I!" answered Tom, gently. "There was never a chance of that, lad."
"Listen," whispered Crailey. "Lean down-- no--closer." He cast a quick glance at Fanchon, kneeling at the other side of the bed, her golden head on the white coverlet, her outstretched hand clutching his; and he spoke so close to Tom's ear and in so low a tone that only Tom could hear. "She never cared for me. She felt that she ought to--but that was only because I masqueraded in your history. She wanted to tell me before I went away that there was no chance for me. She was telling me that, when he called from the window. It was at the dance, the night before, that she knew. I think there has been someone else from the first--God send it's you! Did you speak to her that night or she to you?"
"Ah, no," said Tom Vanrevel. "All the others."
Mrs. Tanberry and Betty and Mr. Bareaud waited in the library, the two women huddled together on a sofa, with their arms round each other, and all the house was very still. By and by, they heard a prolonged, far-away cheering and the steamer's whistle, and knew that the boat was off. Half an hour later, Will Cummings came back alone, entered the room on tip-toe, and silently sank into a chair near Mr. Bareaud, with his face away from Miss Betty. He was to remain in Rouen another week, and join his regiment with Tom. None of the three appeared to notice his coming more than dimly, and he sat with his face bowed in his hands, and did not move.
Thus perhaps an hour passed, with only a sound of footsteps on the gravel of the driveway, now and then, and a low murmur of voices in the rear of the house where people came to ask after Crailey; and when the door of the room where he lay was opened, the four watchers started as at a loud explosion. It was Mrs. Bareaud and the old doctor, and they closed the door again, softly, and came in to the others. They had left Crailey alone with Fanchon and Tom Vanrevel, the two who loved him best.
The warm day beyond the windows became like Sunday, no voices sounded from without in the noon hush, though sometimes a little group of people would gather across the street to eye the house curiously and nod and whisper.
The strong, blue shadows of the veranda pillars stole slowly across the white floor of the porch in a lessening slant, and finally lay all in a line, as the tall clock in a corner of the library asthmatically coughed the hour of noon. In this jarring discordance there was something frightful to Miss Betty. She rose abruptly, and, imperiously waving back Mrs. Tanberry, who would have detained her--for there was in her face and manner the incipient wildness of control overstrained to the breaking- point--she went hurriedly out of the room and out of the house, to the old bench in the garden. There she sank down, her face hidden in her arms; there on the spot where she had first seen Crailey Gray.
