"I think it will all come right now, mother; I do indeed. Put the necklet away, and Ray will tell you all about it. I wish—I wish I did not feel so giddy," she said, as she tried to rise.
"Don't try to get up, my darling—my dear child," her mother said. "O Salome! what should I do without you? Stevens is gone for a cup of hot coffee, and you must lie still."
"Put the necklet back into the dressing-case, mother," Salome repeated. "No one but you and I need ever know. Is it not odd I tremble so? I suppose I must lie quiet to-day."
They undressed her and put her to bed; and there, at twelve o'clock, her uncle found her—with her temperature very high, her head aching, and every sign of coming illness, of what nature Dr. Wilton could not then determine.
CHAPTER XVI.
THE CONSEQUENCE.
SALOME'S illness proved to be rheumatic fever. She was in great pain, and often delirious—wandering in thought to her old home and her childhood, and talking incessantly of the emerald necklet and money and debts, and the troubles which had by her brother's selfishness shadowed her young life, and weighed her down prematurely with the sorrows of older people.
Her mother understood but little of these feverish wanderings. But there was one in that house in whose ear his sister's voice rang with a pain which he never felt before.