Slowly his frozen heart and frozen brain melted beneath the warmth of her great love:  but he did not speak:  only he passed his weak arm round her neck; and she felt that his cheek was wet with tears, while she murmured on, like a cooing dove, the same sweet words again—­

“Call me your love once more, and I shall know that all is past.”

“Then call me no more Elsley, love!” whispered he.  “Call me John Briggs, and let us have done with shams for ever.”

“No; you are my Elsley—­my Vavasour! and I am your wife once more!” and the poor thing fondled his head as it lay upon the pillow.  “My own Elsley, to whom I gave myself, body and soul; for whom I would die now, —­oh, such a death!—­any death!”

“How could I doubt you?—­fool that I was!”

“No, it was all my fault.  It was all my odious temper!  But we will be happy now, will we not?”

Elsley smiled sadly, and began babbling—­Yes, they would take a farm, and he would plough, and sow, and be of some use before he died; “But promise me one thing!” cried he, with sudden strength.

“What?”

“That you will go home and burn all the poetry—­all the manuscripts, and never let the children write a verse—­a verse—­when I am dead?” And his head sank back, and his jaw dropped.

“He is dead!” cried the poor impulsive creature, with a shriek which brought in Tom and Valencia.

“He is not dead, madam:  but you must be very gentle with him, if we are to—­”

Tom saw that there was little hope.

“I will do anything,—­only save him!—­save him!  Mr. Thurnall, till I have atoned for all.”

“You have little enough to atone for, madam,” said Tom, as he busied himself about the sufferer.  He saw that all would soon be over, and would have had Mrs. Vavasour withdraw:  but she was so really good a nurse as long as she could control herself, that he could hardly spare her.

So they sat together by the sick-bed side, as the short hours passed into the long, and the long hours into the short again, and the October dawn began to shine through the shutterless window.

A weary eventless night it was, a night as of many years, as worse and worse grew the weak frame; and Tom looked alternately at the heaving chest, and shortening breath, and rattling throat, and then at the pale still face of the lady.

“Better she should sit by (thought he), and watch him till she is tired out.  It will come on her the more gently, after all.  He will die at sunrise, as so many die.”

At last be began gently feeling for Elsley’s pulse.

Her eye caught his movement, and she half sprang up; but at a gesture from him she sank quietly on her knees, holding her husband’s hand in her own.

Elsley turned toward her once, ere the film of death had fallen, and looked her full in the face, with his beautiful eyes full of love.  Then the eyes paled and faded; but still they sought for her painfully long after she had buried her head in the coverlet, unable to bear the sight.