Isabel Chester lay on the bed, white with anguish, but with a feverish heat burning in her eyes. The shawl, with its many gorgeous tints, lay around her, mingling with her purple dress in picturesque confusion. She tried to sit up when aunt Hannah approached the bed, but instantly lifted both hands to her temples, and fell back again moaning bitterly.
"Ask her, ask her," she cried, looking wildly up at Mary Fuller, "I have been wandering in the hills so long, and am tired out. Ask her for me, Mary Fuller."
Aunt Hannah sat down upon the bed, and Mary Fuller stood before her holding Isabel's hot hand in both hers. With the eloquence which springs from an earnest purpose, she told aunt Hannah all that she had herself been able to gather from the lips now quivering with a chill that preceded violent fever. It was a disjointed narrative, but full of heart-fire. Mary wept as she gave it; but aunt Hannah sat perfectly passive, gazing upon the beautiful creature before her with steady coldness.
When Mary had done, and stood breathlessly waiting for a reply, the old lady moved stiffly as if the silence had aroused her.
"Then she wishes to stay with us," she said.
Isabel started up. "I will be no expense, I can paint, and embroider and sew! I can do so many things. All I want is a home. Give me that, only that!"
She fell back again, shivering and distressed, looking up to aunt Hannah with a glance of touching appeal that disturbed even the composure of that stony face.
"You will let her stay with us!" pleaded Mary.
"What else should we do?" inquired aunt Hannah. "She wants a home, and we have got one to give her. Isn't that enough?"
Isabel, who had been looking up with a vivid hope in her eyes, broke into a hysterical laugh at this, and seizing aunt Hannah's hard hand, kissed it with passionate gratitude.