"What has happened, Susan?" he cried. "Minnie is not ill?"
He betrayed himself in the tone of anguish in which he made the inquiry. Susan twisted her fingers so tightly together that the blood left them, but she felt no pain.
"Why should Minnie be ill?" she asked. "You have not seen her, then?"
"Thank God!" Dan thought to himself; "it is not anxiety for Minnie that has changed her so."
"And her father, Susan?" he said aloud, more softly.
"Her father!" exclaimed Susan, approaching Dan so that he could take her hand; it was like ice. "Basil! He is stricken almost to death. I don't know what to do; and I am pledged, miserable woman that I am--I am pledged not to speak; not to divulge what I know!"
"Poor Susey!" said Dan soothingly, and in a tone of earnest sympathy, thinking that Susan's last words referred to what the doctor had told him of Basil's heart-disease. "Poor Mr. Kindred! I am grieved to the soul to hear it."
She strove to free her hand from his grasp; but he retained it.
"Tell me about Minnie, Susey," he implored. "Ah, if you knew how I am yearning to see her--how I am yearning to console her!"
At this appeal, so strong a trembling took possession of her, that her words, to any but the acutest sense, would not have been distinguishable.
"You, Dan!" she said, tightening her grasp upon his hand. "You yearning to see her! You yearning to console her! Why?"
"Susey, you will help me when I tell you. You will let me see her when I tell you. I love her!"
A deathlike silence followed, and Dan was almost frightened to break it, but he was constrained by his fears to speak.
"There is a hidden meaning in your words, Susan," he said in hushed tones, "that I cannot fathom. Give me some clew, if you have any love for me."
"I can give you none," she answered hurriedly, "until I am released from my pledge. Do not ask me any thing else--I don't think I am conscious of what I am saying. I will go up to Basil--to Mr. Kindred--and beg of him to see you. What is that?"
It was merely a knock at the street-door; but in Susan's nervous condition the sound was sufficient to cause her to start in alarm from Dan's side.
"Only a knock at the door, Susey. You have overtasked yourself, my dear, with nursing."