This irritated Wilson at last, and she set to work to cure him with wholesome but bitter medicine. She sat down beside him one day, and said cheerfully, "We are all _'on the keyfeet'_ just now. Miss Rolleston's beau is come on a visit."
The patient opened his eyes with astonishment.
"Miss Rolleston's beau?"
"Ay, her intended. What, didn't you know, she is engaged to be married?"
"She engaged to be married?" gasped Seaton.
Wilson watched him with a remorseless eye.
"Why, James," said she, after awhile, "did you think the likes of her would go through the world without a mate?"
Seaton made no reply but a moan, and lay back like one dead, utterly crushed by this cruel blow.
A buxom middle-aged nurse now came up and said, with a touch of severity, "Come, my good girl, no doubt you mean well, but you are doing ill. You had better leave him to us for the present."
On this hint Wilson bounced out and left the patient to his misery.
At her next visit she laid a nosegay on his bed and gossiped away, talking of everything in the world except Miss Rolleston.
At last she came to a pause, and Seaton laid his hand on her arm directly, and looking piteously in her face spoke his first word.
"Does she love him?"
"What, still harping on _her?"_ said Wilson. "Well, she doesn't hate him, I suppose, or she would not marry him."
"For pity's sake don't trifle with me! Does she love him?"
"La, James, how can I tell? She mayn't love him quite as much as I could love a man that took my fancy" (here she cast a languishing glance on Seaton); "but I see no difference between her and other young ladies.
Miss is very fond of her papa, for one thing; and he favors the match.
Ay, and she likes her partner well enough. She is brighter like, now he is in the house, and she reads all her friends' letters to him ever so lovingly; and I do notice she leans on him out walking, a trifle more than there is any need for."
At this picture James Seaton writhed in his bed like some agonized creature under vivisection; but the woman, spurred by jealousy, and also by egotistical passion, had no mercy left for him.
"And why not?" continued she; "he is young and handsome and rich and he dotes on her. If you are really her friend you ought to be glad she is so well suited."
At this admonition the tears stood in Seaton's eyes, and after awhile he got strength to say, "I know I ought, I know it. If he is only worthy of her, as worthy as any man could be."
"That he is, James. Why, I'll be bound you have heard of him. It is young Mr. Wardlaw."
Seaton started up in bed. "Who? Wardlaw? what Wardlaw?"
"What Wardlaw? why, the great London merchant, his son. Leastways he manages the whole concern now, I hear; the old gentleman, he is retired by all accounts."
"CURSE HIM! CURSE HIM! CURSE HIM!" yelled James Seaton, with his eyes glaring fearfully and both hands beating the air.
Sarah Wilson recoiled with alarm.
"That angel marry _him!"_ shrieked Seaton. "Never, while I live. I'll throttle him with these hands first."
What more his ungovernable fury would have uttered was interrupted by a rush of nurses and attendants, and Wilson was bundled out of the place with little ceremony.
He contrived, however, to hurl a word after her, accompanied with a look of concentrated rage and resolution.
"NEVER, I TELL YOU--WHILE I LIVE."
