Daisy and Flossie had gone to dinner, and the nurse was resting a few moments in the adjoining room, while Grey sat by her patient; thus he was alone with Bessie, when she startled him with the question, "Why don't you kiss me, Neil?"
Bending over her, he said: "Would you like me to kiss you Bessie?"
"Ye-es," she answered, faintly, and then Grey pressed his lips to hers in a long, passionate kiss, with no thought that there was danger and possible death in the hot breath which he felt upon his cheek as he laid it against hers.
He thought of nothing but the sick girl before him, whom he had kissed, and whom he now knew that he loved better than anything it life; ay, whom he had loved since the Christmas-time when he first looked into her blue eyes and played for the knot of ribbon she wore at her throat.
Grey had seen much of the world, and many bright eyes had flashed upon him glances which mean so much, but which had never affected him. Nothing, in fact, had touched him until he saw Bessie McPherson, whom he had remembered always, and sometimes to himself he had said: "I will see her again. I will know her better, and if--"
He never got farther than that "if," though he was conscious that in all his pictures of a future home there was a face like hers as he had seen it in the old stone house at Stoneleigh. He had not sought her again, but he had found her unsought--sick, helpless, dying perhaps, and he knew how much he loved her, and how dark would be the future if she were snatched from him.
"Oh, Heaven, I can't let her die!" he cried; and, falling on his knees by the bedside, he prayed long and earnestly that she might live for him, who loved her so devotedly.
This was the night before the second day of the carnival, when Grey felt obliged to leave her for a few hours and do duty at his Aunt Lucy's side. Miss Grey had that morning heard rumors of fever in Rome, and with her fears aroused she signified to Grey her wish to leave the city the following Monday.
"You are looking very thin," she said, regarding him anxiously as he bent over her chair, "and I am not feeling very well myself. It is time we were out of Rome I am sure it is not healthy here."
She did look pale, Grey noticed, and, as his first duty was to her, he signified his readiness to leave with her on Monday.