"My dear Juliet, what are you talking about? Of course it is possible, almost anything is possible with human beings, yet it is scarcely the kind of affection one would care to receive. But now really I want to go to sleep, the music has ceased downstairs and I hear voices in farewell. The dance must be over."
CHAPTER XI
THE SAME EVENING
Reluctantly Mary Gilchrist had joined the house party at the "House by the Blue Lagoon".
After her arrival in New York for the first time in her life she had been ill, nothing serious at first, merely a languor and depression which she could not shake off, and then a fever which persisted for some time in spite of every care and devotion.
Never a day passed that she did not say either aloud or to herself that she would have felt scant interest in her own recovery had she not been living with the Camp Fire girls.
After her father's death she was almost entirely alone, with no relatives save distant cousins and separated from the friends of her youth by the years in France. Always she and her father had led a fairly isolated existence on their big thousand-acre wheat farm. Her own love of the outdoors, of boyish amusements and of the work of the estate, together with her father's companionship, had been sufficient.
Shut up in the small New York apartment, ill and grieving, notwithstanding, the affection and attention lavished upon her, for several months Gill had found life difficult.
With the arrival of the cold New York spring she approached a better frame of mind, but still was without desire to join in any gaiety.
Her one expressed wish was to be allowed to remain alone in the apartment while the other girls went for the visit to the "House by the Blue Lagoon".