She understood it perfectly, but the colonel thought to make it clearer by saying:
“Yes, Gertie, you are the child of my wife, Mrs. Schuyler, born in lawful wedlock, and Abelard Lyle was your father!”
He opened the window and carried Gertie to it, and let the cool air blow on her, and dashed water on her face, and only that he had seen Edith thus more than once, would have thought her dead, when he laid her back upon the couch and went to summon help. Miss Rossiter watched with Gertie that night and many other nights, while the fever contracted at Godfrey’s bedside, and brought to a crisis by the terrible shock which she had sustained, ran its course. There were a few moments of consciousness that first night, when Gertie’s eyes opened and looked up at Miss Rossiter, who was bending over her.
“Am I very sick?” she asked faintly, and Miss Rossiter replied:
“Pretty sick, yes; but we hope to have you well soon if you are quiet.”
“Am I going to have the fever like Godfrey?”
“Yes, we think you are, though not so hard.”
“Miss Rossiter, if I am very sick, very,—I want her to come,—mother,—Mrs. Schuyler,—you know.”
“Yes, I know.”
“And if I don’t know her, if I never know her, tell her please, that I have loved her since I first saw her a bride in England, and gave the flowers to her; and tell her, too, I’ve loved that Heloise Fordham ever since Miss Armstrong told me about her and the lover who died, and my name is Heloise, too,—Gertrude Heloise,—and there’s a spot of blood right over my heart; she will find it there if I die.”