"Oh, there he is!" exclaimed Minnie, as he passed the window, and a moment later he entered the room looking very grave indeed.
"What's the matter?" inquired all three almost in a breath.
"It's Mabel," he replied slowly. "She is in great danger, the doctor thinks she has burst a blood-vessel, but cannot be quite sure yet."
"But how did it happen?" cried Minnie, "she was all right when she left here. She did not feel ill at all—only tired."
"The doctor says it must have been the excitement, but I am certain he is wrong there. I know more than he does." The last words were spoken in a voice too low to reach any one but Minnie.
"I know," she said, "she told me about it to-day."
"But you don't know half though—you don't know the terrible state of mind she's been in for months—it may have been years for aught I know, the wearing strain of incessant strife between feeling and reason going on beneath every other interest and occupation. It was little wonder, I think, that it should tell on her thus at last."
Minnie listened in silence while Seymour spoke, and then she said in a low, almost inaudible voice:
"Why did Mabel keep this from me?" And without waiting for a reply went out and sought her own room.