Meanwhile the three venerable sisters and the young doctor were watching anxiously at Daisy’s bedside.
“Oh, my poor little dear––my pretty little dear!” sobbed Ruth, caressing the burning little hands that clung to her so tightly.
“Won’t you hide me?” pleaded Daisy, laying her hot cheek against the wrinkled hand that held hers. “Hide me, please, just as if I were your own child; I have no mother, you know.”
“God help the pretty, innocent darling!” cried the doctor, turning hastily away to hide the suspicious moisture that gathered in his eyes. “No one is going to harm you, little one,” he said, soothingly; “no one shall annoy you.”
“Was it so great a sin? He would not let me explain. He has gone out of my life!” she wailed, pathetically, putting back the golden rings of hair from her flushed face. “Rex! Rex!” she sobbed, incoherently, “I shall die––or, worse, I shall go mad, if you do not come back to me!”
The three ladies looked at one another questioningly, in alarm.
“You must not mind the strange ravings of a person in delirium,” said the doctor, curtly; “they are liable to imagine and say all sorts of nonsense. Pay no attention to what she says, my dear ladies; don’t disturb her with questions. That poor little brain needs absolute rest; every nerve seems to have been strained to its utmost.”
After leaving the proper medicines and giving minute instructions as to how and when it should be administered, Dr. West took his departure, with a strange, vague uneasiness at his heart.
“Pshaw!” he muttered to himself, as he drove briskly along the shadowy road, yet seeing none of its beauty, “how strange it is these young girls will fall in love and marry such fellows as that!” he mused. “There is something about his 72 face that I don’t like; he is a scoundrel, and I’ll bet my life on it!”
The doctor brought his fist down on his knee with such a resounding blow that poor old Dobbin broke into a gallop. But, drive as fast he would, he could not forget the sweet, childish face that had taken such a strong hold upon his fancy. The trembling red lips and pleading blue eyes haunted him all the morning, as though they held some secret they would fain have whispered.