“Good gracious! what a likeness between the two,” said Dr. Howard. “Well, my dear, I will tell you the simple truth. I know you will be a brave girl. Your sister is in danger—a bad case of typhoid fever always means that, you understand; but I have hope, and so
has my friend Ericson, that we shall pull her through. There is no cause for immediate anxiety; but much depends on the next twenty-four hours. Ericson is going to stay up to-night with your sister; and as for you, Miss Marjorie, you must go to bed and have a rest.”
“I am sorry to tell you, Dr. Howard,” said Dr. Ericson, “that Miss Marjorie has been behaving in a very natural but also a very reprehensible manner. She has insisted on living in her sister’s room, has done herself no good, and——”
“Oh, well, as you say, that is natural,” said Dr. Howard, who could read character like a book. “Poor child, she feels this terribly. Give her a sleeping draught, Ericson, won’t you? And now, my dear, go to bed as soon as possible, and leave your sister’s case in our hands, and,” he added, dropping his voice to a whisper, “in the hands of a better Physician.”
He left the room. When he had done so, Marjorie burst into tears.
“Oh, now I can breathe, now I can sleep,” she said. “The hard and terrible strain has left my heart. Yes, Leslie, I shall sleep to-night; I am dead tired.”
[CHAPTER XXVI—ANNIE’S REQUEST.]
The next day Marjorie awoke from her long sleep with a stunned feeling at her heart, but no longer quite such a keen sense of despair. She clung to Leslie, and would scarcely let her out of her sight. The doctors were rather anxious about her. She was scarcely likely to take the fever; but, if she exhausted herself in the way she was doing, she might be laid up with a severe nervous attack. Accordingly, Mrs. Chetwynd implored Leslie to remain with them; and Leslie, having received a note from her mother to say that she was only too glad she was making herself useful, agreed to do so.
On the afternoon of that same day Marjorie went to lie down. There was absolute stillness in the house, for Lettie had gone out to spend the afternoon with a friend. The sick girl was fighting death in the room overhead, and Leslie found herself alone in the pretty boudoir. It was a charming room, furnished with every taste and luxury; but Leslie, as she lay back in a deep chair, had a strange feeling of inertia and lassitude all over her. She was glad to be with Marjorie; but the depression which had so often visited her of late was on this afternoon worse than ever. Mr. Parker’s attitude to her yesterday kept recurring again and again to her memory. The cold, almost disdainful look he had given her, the effort to appear as usual before her mother and brother and sisters, the signal failure of that effort, kept coming back to her. He had done much for her; she had taken
an enormous favor from his hands. Now what a terrible position she found herself in. Oh, Llewellyn was right after all! He would not take a money-favor from anyone. How she wished she had been equally determined.