It had been arranged that he should go up to the university for the next term, but Mr. Hamilton, the old doctor, who had been called in to see to a slight cough which the boy had started, had hummed and hawed, and advised that the 'varsity should be shelved for the present.
"Was he ill?" Stella had asked, anxiously—very anxiously, for, woman-like, she had grown to love with a passionate devotion the boy for whom she had sacrificed herself.
"N—o; not ill," the old doctor had said. "Certainly not ill," and he went on to explain that Frank was delicate—that all boys with fair hair and fair complexions were more or less delicate.
"But he has such a beautiful color," said Stella, nervously.
"Y—es; a nice color," said the old man, and that was all she could get out of him.
But the cough did not go; and as the Autumn mists stole up from the river and covered the meadows with a filmy veil, beautiful to behold, the cough got worse; but the beautiful color did not go either, and so Stella was not very anxious.
As for Frank himself, he treated his ailments with supreme indifference.
"Do I take any medicine?" he said, in answer to Stella's questioning. "Yes, I take all the old woman—I beg his pardon!—the doctor sends. It isn't very unpleasant, and though it doesn't do me much good apparently, it seems to afford you and the aforesaid old woman some satisfaction, and so we are pleased all round."
"You don't seem to take any interest in things, Frank," said Stella, one morning, when she had come into the garden to look at the trees that drew a long line of gold and brown and yellow along the river bank, and had found him leaning on the gate, his hands clasped before him, his eyes fixed on the Hall, very much as she had first seen him, the night he had come home.
He looked round at her and smiled faintly.