Her husband could hardly bear to lose
sight of her for a moment, or to take anything from any hand save
hers. If Madame Darpent had not absolutely taken the command of both
she would never have had any rest, for she never seemed sensible of
fatigue; indeed, to sit with his hand in hers really refreshed her
more than sleep. When she looked forward to his recovery, her only
regret was at her own wickedness in the joy that WOULD spring up when
she thought of her poor cripple being wholly dependent on her, and
never wanting to leave her again. I had been obliged to leave her
after the first night, but I spent much of every day in trying to
help her, and she was always in a tearful state of blissful hope, as
she would whisper to me his promises for the future and his
affectionate words--the fretful ones, of which she had her full
share, were all forgotten, except by Clement Darpent, who shrugged
his shoulders at them, and thought when he had a wife---
Poor Armand, would he have been able, even as a maimed man, to keep
his word? We never knew, for, after seeming for a fortnight to be on
the way to recovery, he took a turn for the worse, and after a few
days of suffering, which he bore much better than the first, there
came that cessation of pain which the doctors declared to mean that
death was beginning its work. He was much changed by these weeks of
illness. He seemed to have passed out of that foolish worldly dream
that had enchanted him all his poor young life; he was scarcely
twenty-seven, and to have ceased from that idol-worship of the Prince
which had led him to sacrifice on that shrine the wife whom he had
only just learned to love and prize.
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