Emily stood during this question and answer, motionless, pale as death,
and with her hands clasped together, betraying by the workings of her
fingers in a kind of convulsive motion, the intensity of her interest.
She had seen the draught prepared which it was so desirable that Denbigh
should take, and it now stood rejected on a table, where it could be
seen through the open door of his room. Almost breathless, she glided
in, and taking the draught in her hand, she approached the bed, by which
sat John alone, listening with a feeling of despair to the wanderings of
the sick man. Emily hesitated once or twice, as she drew near Denbigh;
her face had lost the paleness of anxiety, and glowed with another
emotion.
"Mr. Denbigh--dear Denbigh." said Emily, with energy, unconsciously
dropping her voice into the softest notes of persuasion, "will you
refuse me?--me, Emily Moseley, whose life you have saved?"
"Emily Moseley!" repeated Denbigh, and in those tones so remarkable to
his natural voice. "Is she safe? I thought she was killed--dead." Then,
as if recollecting himself, he gazed intently on her countenance--his
eye became less fiery--his muscles relaxed--he smiled, and took, with
the docility of a well-trained child, the prescribed medicines from her
hand. His ideas still wandered, but his physician, profiting by the
command Emily possessed over his patient, increased his care, and by
night the fever had abated, and before morning the wounded man was in a
profound sleep. During the whole day, it was thought necessary to keep
Emily by the side of his bed; but at times it was no trifling tax on her
feelings to remain there. He spoke of her by name in the tenderest
manner, although incoherently, and in terms that restored to the
blanched cheeks of the distressed girl more than the richness of their
native color. His thoughts were not confined to Emily, however: he
talked of his father, of his mother, and frequently spoke of his poor
deserted Marian. The latter name he dwelt on in the language of the
warmest affection, condemned his own desertion of her, and, taking Emily
for her, would beg her forgiveness, tell her her sufferings had been
enough, and that he would return, and never leave her again. At such
moments his nurse would sometimes show, by the paleness of her cheeks,
her anxiety for his health; and then, as he addressed her by her proper
appellation, all her emotions appeared absorbed in the sense of shame at
the praises with which he overwhelmed her. Mrs. Wilson succeeded her in
the charge of the patient, and she retired to seek that repose she so
greatly needed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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