She shook her head ominously.
“No. He is far from well. You did not realize, dear, what an effect that letter of yours would have upon him. It was a mortal blow.”
I tried to speak, but I could not; my bosom rose and fell with quick little gasping breaths, as if I was suffocating.
“There was no particular illness,” my friend continued, “just a general fading away, a slow discouragement. He had no interest in anything, and about a month ago Doctor Owen told me the poor fellow would not live long unless we could find you.”
“Oh, if I had only known! If I had dreamed that he would care so—so much,” I sobbed. “How—how did you find me?”
Seraphine answered with that far-away, mystic look in her eyes: “It was your mother, dear—she told me we must go to Lourdes, she said it quite distinctly, she said we must sail that very week, or it would be too late—and we did sail.”
I stared at her with widening, frightened eyes.
“Seraphine! You don't mean that—that Christopher is—here?” I cried.
The clairvoyant bowed her head slowly.
“He is here, at the hotel, but he is very ill. He took cold on the ship and—it got worse. He has pneumonia.”