"Because, good Heloise, her mother is a spectre, a wraith, a lingering ghost," said Mrs. Treharne, taking the maid's hand in both her own and patting it; whereupon Heloise promptly produced a handkerchief from the pocket of her tiny apron with her free hand and began to dab at her eyes. The mistress studied the maid with surprise. "Why, Heloise, I did not know you cared so much," she said. "But I have noticed that you do not scold me any more. That is because you do care, then, Heloise?"
"Madame does not need to be scolded any more," said Heloise, brokenly. "Before, one was obliged to scold her; that is, one thought so." The girl turned away her face and gazed blankly out of the window at the swaying trees. "But now, madame, one is sorry ever to have scolded at all."
They occupied a pretty hotel cottage on the outskirts of the bright little town of Saranac in the Adirondacks. It is a town transiently inhabited mainly by victims of pulmonary affections. But Mrs. Treharne's illness was not of that character. She had been obliged to take to bed a few days after reaching Saranac. Her medical men had told her that she was suffering from a gradual disintegration of the vital forces.
"I quite understood that before I came here," Mrs. Treharne had said to them. "You express in terms of politeness a fact that I have been perfectly familiar with for a long time: that I am simply worn out. There are reasons, aside from any consideration of myself, why I should like to have you gentlemen inform me as to one point at once."
"And that is?" the physicians had asked her.
"Am I to get well, or am I to die?" Mrs. Treharne had asked them out of hand.
Very naturally the medical men had paused under the impact of so unusually direct a question. Then they had begun to tell her that her case presented certain complications of a somewhat grave character, and that—
"I understand," Mrs. Treharne had interrupted, smiling up at them with a bravery which the physicians later commented upon glowingly. But they had not sought to disabuse her of the inference which their halting words and manner had caused her to derive.
Mrs. Treharne had turned the matter over in her mind for days before cabling to Louise. Before sending that message she had, in her perplexity, turned to her maid for advice.
"Heloise," she had said to the devoted French girl, "tell me something, won't you? The doctors have given me to understand that—oh, well, that I am not to be here very long. Do you think it would be well for me to send for my daughter?"