The woman who was watching beside his bed arose, and Rosamund crossed the narrow space. She bent over him a little, put out her hand, but shrank back, restrained perhaps by the fear of an emotion which threatened to be too strong for her.
She turned, went blindly from the little room, and Pa Cary led her out to the wagon. If he talked to her on the way to his house she did not hear him. Tim saw them coming, and ran to meet her. The pressure of his warm little arms about her neck, in the "tight squeeze" that he usually reserved for Eleanor, did more than anything else to bring her back to a normal state of mind.
But after his first embrace, Tim wanted to go to the stable with Father Cary. Eleanor was standing in the little familiar doorway, under the overhanging roof made by the upper floor. She waited, as if spell-bound, while Rosamund walked slowly up the path to the house; it was the look on the girl's face that held her back, for her heart was reaching out in sympathy. At last Rosamund stood before her, and they looked into each other's eyes; then Eleanor opened her arms wide, and with a sob drew Rosamund to her.
"Oh, my sweet, my Rose!" she cried, her tears on Rosamund's cold cheek. "I knew! I knew! I knew it was John! But he'll get well, darling. He will live for your sake!"
But Rosamund went past her into the house, looked about the little familiar room as if she had never seen it before, and seated herself in a chair near the table.
Eleanor took off her hat and unfastened her coat as if she had been a child, instead of the stricken woman that she was; Rosamund looked up at her in a dumb agony of appeal.
Eleanor repeated the story she had already heard from Father Cary; at the end she paused, hesitated, and said,
"But there is one thing more that you've got to know, Rose. The house was set on fire."
Rosamund looked up at her, as if waiting.
"Oh, don't look like that, my darling! Try to understand! Someone set fire to the house—it's so cruel to have to tell you!"