“Whither?”
It was a good forty-eight hours before Chester could think clearly. His aunt had sternly avoided his room, and he had been dependent upon Laura, who attended him as he lay quite prostrated by the agonising pains in his head. She hardly spoke, but saw to his wants as a sisterly duty, and felt that silent reproach was better than words to one who had proved himself such a profligate.
“I can’t understand it,” she said to herself again and again. “It is so unlike him. If he would only repent, poor Bel might forgive him—in time. No; I cannot speak to him yet.”
She little thought how her brother blessed her for her silence, as he lay struggling to get behind that black curtain; but all in vain.
He was sleeping heavily on the third night, when he suddenly woke up with the mental congestion gone. The pain had passed away, and his brain felt clear and bright once more.
He remembered perfectly now. The scene with Marion after his triumphant declaration of all danger being past. Their embrace. The interruption by the coming of the saturnine head of the house, and the struggle, all came back vividly clear, and with photographic minuteness. He recalled, too, how in the encounter when he had forced his adversary back over the edge of the table, he felt that an effort was being made to get at some weapon.
Then the great athletic brother came and separated them, remonstrating on the folly of the encounter at such a time.
“How strange that I can remember it all so clearly now,” muttered Chester. “Yes, he said that it was over a dispute. He would not acknowledge the real cause, and she did not speak. The scoundrel; he had been persecuting her with his addresses. I see now; that must have been the cause of the first trouble. Her brother was defending her from him.”
Then he recalled how the pair went away, and that the old housekeeper stayed, while Marion sat by the patient’s side, avoiding his gaze, and as if repenting that she had given way to her feelings.
A tray was brought in by Paddy, so that the housekeeper should not leave the room; and he stopped, talking good-temperedly enough, for some little time, and almost playing the part of servant to them, till they had all partaken scantily of the excellent meal; but he did not have another opportunity of speaking to Marion alone.