Val went angrily up the terrace-steps; but all the same, Julia knew perfectly that she had secured herself now against Ethan's hearing what had happened. Val could, most indefensibly, tear her secret out of her keeping in the passion of the moment. But Julia had little fear that in cold blood her old friend would "give her away" to the man they both loved.
CHAPTER XXVII
That night Mrs. Gano was prostrated by a feverish cold. The doctor was sent for, and Val carried out his instructions so faithfully that in twenty-four hours the patient was comfortably mending.
In the intervals of nursing Val had written to Ethan in pencil:
"I've got to see you. It doesn't matter that I can't ask you to the Fort, or that grandma is not to know. You must come and stay a day or two at some small town quite near here. I'll get a day off for a picnic or something, and meet you either in Blake's Woods, or at one of the steamboat landings up the river. Don't hesitate about this. I'm not a child, and I've a right to see you about a matter so important to me."
She closed without a hint as to what the matter was.
He answered by return of post, pointing out that he couldn't possibly come to see her clandestinely, for her own sake.
"For my sake! Not a bit of it. For grandma's sake. He's afraid."