"We must have her moved over to the sickroom before she grows so much worse as to make it impossible," said Mrs. Pomeroy to Delia, who stood by, looking the picture of misery, but perfectly silent unless spoken to. "Poor child, that moonlight walk has cost her dear."
"It has, indeed," replied Delia, bitterly, but she said no more.
The transit was not accomplished without extreme suffering upon Emily's part, and she shrieked more than once, notwithstanding her efforts at fortitude.
All that night, and for many succeeding nights and days, she suffered agonies almost beyond endurance. Her mind wandered at times, and then she talked incessantly of her home life, but curiously enough, she made no allusion to any thing which had happened at school. When her reason returned, and she found she had been wandering, she showed great anxiety and distress, and asked with much earnestness what she had talked about, but seemed relieved when she was assured that she had said nothing that any one could understand.
At last the fever was subdued, but it left her so weak that it seemed for many days as though her life hung upon a thread. Delia would gladly have devoted her whole time to nursing, but her presence seemed to excite Emily so much, that at last it was deemed best for her not to enter the room at all.
Delia wept bitterly when she heard of the prohibition, but she made no objection in words. Indeed, she did not seem to speak at all, if she could help it. All the girls noticed how sad and reserved she was, but her depression was naturally laid to the account of Emily's danger and suffering.
"How much feeling Delia shows," said Belle Faushane, one day, to Alice Parker. "I never before gave her credit for caring for any one but herself. It shows how wrong it is to judge any one so severely."
"Delia is very different from what she used to be," observed Alice. "I should not wonder if Emily's loss should be the means of her conversion."
"Her loss—what do you mean?" asked Belle, startled. "You don't think Emily is going to die?"
"I believe she will," said Alice. "I was in to see her a moment this afternoon, and I never saw any one look more like it. She is so weak that she cannot speak above a whisper, and I do not see that she gains at all."