There came a knock at the door.
"That's Tom Fuller," said Elsie; "tell him to come in, Bessie."
Mellen started up and opened the door himself. There stood Tom, clad in dry garments, but still greatly agitated.
"How is she?" he asked. "Is she better?"
"You have saved her life!" exclaimed Mellen, grasping his two hands; "you have saved her life!"
"But is she better?" he repeated, quite too anxious for any thought of the credit due himself, and too unselfish to desire it even if he had remembered.
"Come in and see," called Elsie, in a tender voice from her sofa.
Tom brushed by Mellen, and down he went on his knees by the couch, exclaiming:
"She looks all right now. Oh, thank God!"
Mellen had been too profoundly disturbed himself for conjecture regarding this passionate outburst; to him it seemed natural that every one should be agitated, and Elsie soon brought them back to safer common-places by her gayety, which not even the peril from which she had been so recently rescued could entirely subdue.