“Is Alice sick, Retty?” Victoriano asked, without heeding Everett's apology for coming.
“Yes, she has a high fever, and is very delirious. I am going for a doctor, but as she has been calling for Clarence most piteously, mother thought he would come to see her.”
Don Mariano and Victoriano turned several shades paler than they were before, but they related to Everett what had happened, as far as they knew. Still the reason why Clarence left must yet remain a mystery to them until Mercedes could explain it.
Everett was greatly disconcerted and pained. He had hoped to find Clarence, and as his father seemed moved and grieved at Alice's illness, all the family inferred that he would be only too glad to see Clarence restored to them.
“I must hurry for a doctor,” said Everett, with trembling lips, “and when Clarence arrives in San Francisco he will find a telegram awaiting him there.”
“He will find two,” said Don Mariano.
“He can never stay away if he knows that Miss Mercedes and Alice are sick—sick with grief at his going from us,” Everett said; adding: “are you not going to send for a physician for Miss Mercedes?”
“Yes; Gabriel will go very soon,” Don Mariano replied.
“Who is your doctor? Can't I call him for you?”
On being told the doctor's name, Everett said that he was the one he proposed to bring for Alice. Don Mariano then wrote a line asking the doctor to come, and Everett hurried off on his sad errand.