"You mean some other member of the family besides Miss Halcombe?" I suggested, seeing her at a loss to proceed.
The heightening colour spread to her forehead and her neck, and the nervous fingers suddenly clasped themselves fast round the edge of the book.
"There is some one else," she said, not noticing my last words, though she had evidently heard them; "there is some one else who might like a little keepsake if--if I might leave it. There would be no harm if I should die first----"
She paused again. The colour that had spread over her cheeks suddenly, as suddenly left them. The hand on the album resigned its hold, trembled a little, and moved the book away from her. She looked at me for an instant--then turned her head aside in the chair. Her handkerchief fell to the floor as she changed her position, and she hurriedly hid her face from me in her hands.
Sad! To remember her, as I did, the liveliest, happiest child that ever laughed the day through, and to see her now, in the flower of her age and her beauty, so broken and so brought down as this!
In the distress that she caused me I forgot the years that had passed, and the change they had made in our position towards one another. I moved my chair close to her, and picked up her handkerchief from the carpet, and drew her hands from her face gently. "Don't cry, my love," I said, and dried the tears that were gathering in her eyes with my own hand, as if she had been the little Laura Fairlie of ten long years ago.
It was the best way I could have taken to compose her. She laid her head on my shoulder, and smiled faintly through her tears.
"I am very sorry for forgetting myself," she said artlessly. "I have not been well--I have felt sadly weak and nervous lately, and I often cry without reason when I am alone. I am better now--I can answer you as I ought, Mr. Gilmore, I can indeed."
"No, no, my dear," I replied, "we will consider the subject as done with for the present. You have said enough to sanction my taking the best possible care of your interests, and we can settle details at another opportunity. Let us have done with business now, and talk of something else."
I led her at once into speaking on other topics. In ten minutes' time she was in better spirits, and I rose to take my leave.