CHAPTER XIII.
“The next day Cora was sick. She lay in bed, moaning in a feeble way, her face very much flushed, her lips dry and parched. She was very ill, they said, and the doctor was sent for. My first thought was that she would die with her sin unrepented.
“So she lay in a kind of stupor for many days. There was silence, or only whispers and soft steps over the house, and we neither laughed nor played. It was very solemn and strange. Once, when the door was ajar, I caught a glimpse in the darkened room of a hot face on the pillows, and a shorn head bound with white bandages.
“And thus the time passed. Every morning I woke in a fright, thinking the pale messenger had come in the night; and at each assurance, ‘She still lives,’ my spirits rose, until night and gloom coming again, I became sad and fearful. And then we wondered what death was, and it seemed to our young lives very dreadful, and we sat pale and grieving together over our many unkindnesses to Cora, thinking if she were only well, only with us once more, that we could never be vexed with her again.
“I had been sitting alone in the library, one afternoon, trying to forget my pain in a book. The blinds were down, there was only a glimmer of light here and there, and the gloom, the stillness, grew so deep that I went out into the sunshine, looking for life to take my thoughts from death.
“There was Cora’s pretty Italian greyhound, Fairy, on the piazza. She put her pretty head into my hands, looking wistfully into my face, as if asking for her mistress. I could not bear that. I went into the garden. There was her flower bed, full of weeds, and the buds were withering for want of water. I began to pluck out the weeds, working zealously, glad to do something for her—and resolved to tend her garden till she was well.
“The old white-haired gardener came near while I was thus employed. He shook his head.