“If he pulls through it will be your doing,” Tom sometimes said to her. And Monica felt she could not do enough for the youth, who had suffered all this in carrying out her husband’s last command, and who had succumbed when his task was done, in hearing of the fate that had befallen his friend. A curious bond seemed established between those two, the power of which he felt with a throb of keen joy almost akin to pain, when at last the fever was subdued, and he began to know in a feeble, uncertain sort of fashion, what it was that had happened, and how life had been going with him during the past weeks. It was of Monica he asked the account of that terrible night, and from her lips he learned the story to which none else had dared to allude in her presence. It was he who talked to her of Randolph, recalled incidents of the past, talked of their boyish days and the escapades they had indulged together, passing on to the increase of mutual understanding and affection that had bound them together as manhood advanced. Nobody else talked to her like this. Haddon never could have done so, had not weakness and illness brought them into such close communion one with another. His feelings towards Monica were those of simple adoration—he worshipped the very ground she trod on. He often felt that to die with her hand upon his head, her eyes looking gently and kindly into his, was all and more than he could wish. His intense loving devotion gave him a sort of insight into her true nature, and he knew by instinct that he did not hurt her when he talked to her of him who was gone. Perhaps from no other lips could Monica have borne that name to be spoken just then; but Haddon in his hours of wandering had talked so much of Randolph, that she had grown used to hear him speak of the husband she had loved and lost, and she knew by the way in which he had betrayed himself then how deeply and truly he loved him. When the fever had gone, and the patient lay white and weak, hardly able to move or speak, yet with a mind cleared from the haunting shadows of delirium, eager to know the history of all that had passed, it had not seemed very hard then, in answer to the wistful look in the big grey eyes, and the whispered words from the pale lips to tell him all the truth; and the ice once broken thus, it had been no effort to talk of Randolph afterwards, and to let Haddon talk of him too.