“Father, father,” she exclaimed, throwing herself into his arms. “Oh, father.”
Nothing could be more startling than her appearance. The bright spot on her cheek was now deepened to purple, and her eyes had a strange, feverish lustre.
“Why, what is the meaning of this?” cried Mr. Gleason, turning in alarm to his wife.
“Something must have terrified her—only feel of her hands, they are as cold as ice; and look at her cheeks.”
“She seems ill, very ill,” observed Clinton, rising, much agitated; “shall I go for a physician?”
“I fear Doctor Hazleton is not yet returned,” said Mrs. Gleason, anxiously. “I think she is indeed ill—alarmingly so.”
“No, no,” cried Helen, clinging closer to her father, “don’t send for Doctor Hazleton—anybody in the world but him. I cannot see him.”
“How strange,” exclaimed Mr. Gleason, “she must be getting delirious. You had better carry her up stairs,” added he, turning to his wife, “and do something to relieve her, while I go for some medical advice. She is subject to sudden nervous attacks.”
“No, no,” cried Helen, still more vehemently, “don’t take me up stairs; I cannot go back; it would kill me. Only let me stay with you.”
Mr. Gleason, who well remembered the terrible fright Helen had suffered in her childhood—her fainting over her mother’s corpse—her imprisonment in the lonely school-house—believed that she had received some sudden shock inflicted by a phantom of her own imagination. Her frantic opposition to being taken up stairs confirmed this belief, and he insisted on his wife’s conveying her to her own room and giving her an anodyne. Clinton felt as if his presence must be intrusive, and left the room—but he divined the cause of Helen’s strange emotion. He heard a quick, passionate tread overhead, and he well knew what the lion-strength of Mittie’s unchained passions must be.