The man took Augusta into a small room on the ground floor, switched on the light, and left her. In a minute or two Flora rushed in.
“Gussie,” she said, “how madly dangerous! What have you done it for?”
“What have you neglected me for?” said Augusta, opening her mackintosh and revealing her pretty evening-dress. “What is the matter? This is the night of your party, and you promised to meet me outside our wood. You never came, and I have walked all the way; and, oh, I am so tired, and so dreadfully frightened! What is it, Flo? What is wrong?”
“Then you never got my letter?” said Flora.
“Oh no; but please explain this mystery. I am so tired. Is not there a party to-night? Oh, I have gone through such a lot to come! And now what can this mean?”
“I am ever so sorry,” said Flora. “Mother would be quite mad if she knew you had come into the house, Gussie. It is too late for the rest of us, unfortunately; but for you”——
“Oh, what is it?”
“It is Constance. She is awfully ill—most fearfully, dangerously ill. We have all been with her until this morning, and the doctor says the whole house is infected. It is smallpox. Oh, isn’t it frightful?”
“Smallpox!” said Augusta.
She would not have feared scarlet-fever or diphtheria. But smallpox—that ghastly disease which did not always kill, but which took the lovely and the graceful and the gracious and defiled them; which made the fair face hideous, destroyed the right proportions, and stamped them for life!