"Mary, where is Mary Fuller?" she inquired, "I wish to speak with Mary
Fuller."
Mary heard her voice and sprang up.
"Oh! Isabel, this is kind, I am glad you have come so soon."
"Come with me, Mary. I must speak with you."
"Let us go up to my room," said Mary, with some excitement, when she saw the flushed face and agitated manner of her friend.
"Mary, Mary, come here, hold my head against your bosom, it aches, oh, it aches terribly," cried Isabel, reaching out her arms as she sunk on the bed in Mary's room. "I have come to live with you dear Mary, tell me I am welcome, oh, tell me I shall not be turned out of doors. I ask nothing better than to stay at the Old Homestead all my life."
"You are sick, darling Isabel, very sick, to talk so wildly," said Mary, striving to soothe her excitement; "why, you would seem like a bird of paradise in a robin's nest here at the Old Homestead—yes, yes you are sick, Isabel, your hands are burning, your lips mutter these things strangely; what has come over you?"
"I have left Mrs. Farnham for good!" exclaimed Isabel, starting up and pushing the hair back from her temples. "I shall never see Frederick again, never, never—Mary, Mary Fuller, I know this is death, my heart seems clutched with an iron claw."
"Try and be calm, dear Isabel—if you have really left Mrs. Farnham, tell me, how it all came about, and what I can do."
"She taunted me with my poverty—she flung the Alms-House in my teeth—oh, Mary, Mary, dependence on that woman has been a burning curse to my nature—oh I would die for the power to fling back all the money she heaped upon me. It crushes my life out."