Bea looked up for an instant, with a flash of relief in her face, then burst out again, crying more bitterly than ever, and with a vehemence that shook her from head to foot.
"What ever can it be?" thought Kittie, flying up stairs, and off to the garret in desperation; but, pausing as she reached the door, and shaking with a sudden terror. What if Ernestine should be in there dead, or something? She shook and hesitated, but finally opened the door, for Kittie was brave, and looked in!
Nothing seemed to be the matter. The sunshine came warmly in at the windows and illumined every corner. The little black trunk stood there, but it was closed, and she did not notice it, though she went all around, and amazed to find nothing out of place. Over in an unused corner, for the garret was very large, stood a big dry-goods box that Mr. Dering had long kept some things packed in, but on the very day before his sudden death, he had been up in the garret, unnailed the heavy cover, and gone to the bottom for some things that he wanted, and then hurried away, intending to repack, and nail up, on his return; but in the little act, was a mighty working of Providence, or fate; the box had remained just so, with its dislodged contents at its side, the little black trunk among them, and the garret having been rarely entered during the winter, it had not been noticed or remedied.
Kittie, happening to glance that way, saw it; and with a vague idea that Ernestine might be in the box, went over to it, pushed the little black trunk nearer, and stood on it to look in; but saw only a confused lot of things, tumbled up in her father's haste, and so she got down, and left the garret slowly, more perplexed and bewildered than ever.
As she went down the stairs, she heard, she surely heard an unmistakable moan, that stopped her in an instant, and made her heart beat fast and loud with terror; and as she stood and listened, it came again, and it did not come from the garret either.
As I said, Kittie was brave. Kat would have torn wildly down stairs, and declared that the house was haunted; but she stood there, quite still, until that feeble moan came again; then with a thought as quick as lightning, she cleared the remaining steps with one jump, flew across the hall, and into the spare room!
There, at last, after all these hours of painful anxiety and fright, there, so near, that by simply opening an unused door, they would have found her—lay Ernestine.
As Kittie burst into the room, Ernestine tossed her arms above her head, and uttered that feeble moan again; and too astonished to utter a word of any kind, Kittie saw that she was unconscious, that her face was scarlet with fever, and that the dazed, wide open eyes recognized nothing.
She never exactly remembered how she got down stairs, and told Bea; or how it happened that Kat was with them when they went back; she only knew that Bea threw down her handkerchief, and worked swift and silent, that she helped, and that Kat flew off again to bring Mrs. Dane, and was back in just a moment, for that lady, being so forcibly impressed with an idea that something was wrong, had started over, and met Kat just a few minutes after she came tearing out of the gate.
It did not take long to get Ernestine into her own bed, to bathe her burning hands and face, and smooth her tangled hair, that lay all over the pillow like stray sun-beams. She submitted passively to all of it, and appeared to notice no one, except now and then to turn her eyes to Mrs. Dane, with a puzzled, pleading look, and mutter with a wistful longing: "It isn't so, is it? I know it isn't;" then would drift into some unintelligible murmurings, or lay quiet with no expression of any kind in her face.