"You will soon be able to put him at defiance. But, indeed, you are so weak now you could not attempt too much."
"Oh, that's nonsense! I don't believe anything about it. You shall stay here with me; if I have to be kept prisoner I will hold you fast, too."
"There is no fear of my attempting to leave the room," he replied.
Elsie felt much improved. She sat up in bed, made her brother play at various games of cards with her, talked and looked herself again.
But into the conversation, in which Mellen did his best to hold a share, there crept some chance mention of that name which those walls must no longer hear. It fell from Elsie's lips thoughtlessly, and at once dispelled her faint attempt at cheerfulness, throwing her into the gloom which she had succeeded in shutting out for a little time.
"Did you write that letter, Grant?" she asked, quickly.
"Yes; I sent it down to the village, to go by the morning's mail."
"Thank you, Grant, thank you!"
She attempted to console herself with thinking she had done something in Elizabeth's behalf, but when her conscience compared it with all that she ought to have done, her coward heart shrank back at the contrast.
"I am tired of cards," she said, sweeping the bits of pasteboard off the bed with one of her abrupt movements, which would have been rude in another, but seemed graceful and childish in her. "Cards are stupid things at the best!"