"But you will never know, will you, Madgie dear, just how much of what
I said was false and how much true?"
Her eyes held mine a moment longer, and the malignance in their feverish brightness frightened me. Then she closed them wearily.
As I turned away from her bedside I realized that she had prophesied only too truthfully. There would be times in my life when I would believe Dicky only. But I was also afraid there would be others when her words would come back to me with intensified power to sear and scar.
XXX
THE WEEKS THAT FOLLOWED
Grace Draper did not die. Thanks to the assiduous care of Dr. Pettit and the two trained nurses Dicky had provided she gradually struggled up from the "valley of the shadow of death" in which she had lain to convalescence.
As soon as she was able to travel she went to the home of the relative in the country whom she had visited in the summer. One of the nurses went with her to see that she was settled comfortably, and upon returning reported that she was getting strong fast, and in a month or two more would be her usual self again.
Neither Dicky nor I had seen her before she left. Indeed, Dicky appeared to have taken an uncontrollable aversion to the girl since her attempt to kill him and herself and disliked hearing even her name mentioned. As for me, I had a positive dread of ever looking into the girl's beautiful false face again.
It was Lillian who made all the necessary arrangements both for the girl's stay in her own home and her transfer to the country.
But between the time of my mother-in-law's arrival at our house in Marvin and the departure of Grace Draper from Lillian's home lay an interval of a fortnight in which what we all considered the miraculous happened. My mother-in-law grew to like Lillian Underwood.