'But, Alison!' he whispered, passionately, 'this--this is your mother's duty. She's bound to it by every law of marriage--by every impulse of humanity.'
'You do not know my mother, sir,' said Alison, quietly; 'God forgive me for these unnatural words against her that bore me. But my mother has her health, and is, besides, of an impatient nature, and cannot understand that others should be sick and feeble.... I'll say no more.'
They went together to the far end of the low, long room, which was now getting dark.
'But this is monstrous!' said Herries, vehemently, 'a second sacrifice--I repeat it! You sacrificed me once to Nancy--and now you would sacrifice me to another. You cannot love me!'
'I love you,' said Alison, intently, 'I love you better than all the world--better than my poor father. But, or ever I saw your face, Archie, I knew his, and he has been a good father to me. God would surely desert me if, knowing what I do of things at home, I were to leave him in his helplessness. Archie, you'll not bring me to tempt God's anger?' It was almost a cry, but Herries would not hear the justice in it.
'Then I go,' he said, sore and angry, 'I go, uncomforted and alone.' But Alison clung to him with a sob.
'Oh, no--no--no!' she whispered, 'don't leave me, Archie--oh, not yet! I've been so long alone--so long--and never a sight of your face, and sometimes I would be nearly mad to think I might forget it. But no--I have remembered every line.'
Herries held his breath, and in the poignant sacredness of the moment his heart stood still. For never had Alison's arms held him as they did just now, or her eyes read his face; and he felt that woman's passion, unashamed, had taken the place of a girl's timid love. Her fingers touched his hair, and yet, somehow, with all its passion, it was a touch that might have been his mother's.
'You're gotten so grey, Archie,' she said, with a little tender laugh. 'You'll scarcely need the powder now!'
But Herries put her from him, almost roughly, with an oath.
'I can't bear it, Ally,' he said. 'If I must go, let me go now. I must have all or nothing.'
He took his riding-whip from the table where he had laid it, and turned and went without a word.
That night did a stranger cause much commotion in the streets of C----by rampaging (as the inhabitants expressed it) up and down, demanding at every turn the surgeon who waited upon Mr. Graham of The Mains. It was Herries who pursued this curious quest, and the placid citizens judged him demented, as, indeed, but a few hours since, he would have judged himself. He traced the personage whom he sought to his own dwelling, where he found him, resting after the labours of the day, over a comfortable and steaming glass of toddy. Herries entered the room, booted and spurred as he was, and rang a guinea on the doctor's table with much the air of holding a pistol to his ear.