Ethelyn's Mistake

by Mary Jane Holmes

She was standing now near the low window, taking in the effect of her surroundings, from the white ground carpet covered with brilliant bouquets, to the unrumpled, snowy bed which looked so deliciously cool and inviting and seemed beckoning the poor, tired woman to its embrace. And Ethie yielded at last to the silent invitation, forgetting everything save how tired, and sorry, and fever-smitten she was, and how heavy her swollen eyelids were with tears unshed, and the many nights she had not slept. Ethie's cheeks were turning crimson, and her pulse throbbing rapidly as, loosing her long, beautiful hair, which of all her girlish beauty remained unimpaired, and putting off her little gaiters, she lay down upon the snowy bed, and pressing her aching head upon the pillows, whispered softly to her other self--the Ethelyn Grant she used to know in Chicopee, when a little twelve-year-old girl she fled from the maddened cow and met the tall young man from the West.

"Governor Markham they call him now," she said, "and I am Mrs. Governor," and a wild laugh broke the stillness of the rooms kept so sacred until now.

In the hall below Hannah overheard the laugh, and mounting the stairs cast one frightened glance into the chamber where a tossing, moaning figure lay upon the bed, with masses of brown hair falling about the face and floating over the pillows.

Good Mrs. Dobson dropped one of the jars she was filling when Hannah came with her strange tale, and leaving the scalding mass of pulp and juice upon the floor, she hastened up the stairs, and with as stern a voice as it was possible for her to assume, demanded of Ethelyn what she was doing there. But Ethie only whispered on to herself of divorces, and governors' wives-elect, and bridal chambers where she could rest so nicely. Mrs. Dobson and Mrs. Dobson's ire were nothing to her, and the good woman's wrath changed to pity as she met the bright, restless eyes, and felt the burning hands which she held for a moment in her own. It was a pretty little hand--soft and white and small almost as a child's. There was a ring upon the left hand, too; a marriage ring, Mrs. Dobson guessed, wondering now more than ever who the stranger was that had thus boldly taker possession of a room where none but the family ever came.

"She is married, it would seem," she said to Hannah, and then, as Richard's name dropped from Ethelyn's lips, she looked curiously at the flushed face so ghastly white, save where spots of crimson colored the cheeks, and at the mass of hair which Ethie had pushed up and off from the forehead it seemed to oppress with its weight.

"Go, bring me some ice-water from the cellar," Mrs. Dobson said to Hannah, who hurried away on the errand, while the housekeeper, left to herself, bent nearer to Ethelyn and closely scrutinized her face; then stepping to Richard's room, she examined the picture on the wall, where the hair was brushed back and the lips were parted like the lips and hair in that other room where the stranger was.

Mrs. Dobson was a good deal alarmed--"set back," as she afterward expressed it when telling the story to Melinda--and her knees fairly knocked together as she returned to the sick-room, and bending again over the stranger asked, "Is your name Ethelyn?"

For an instant there was a look of consciousness in the brown eyes, and Ethie whispered faintly:

"Don't tell him. Don't send me away. Let me stay here and die; it won't be long, and this pillow is so nice."

She was wandering again, and satisfied that her surmises were correct, Mrs. Dobson lifted her gently up, and to the great surprise of Hannah, who had returned with the ice, began removing the heavy dress and the skirts so much in the way.