"I might have had the overcoat, for Katy will never come home again, never. God grant that it's the Cameron pride, not hers, that kept her from us," the old man said, as on the hay he knelt down and prayed that Katy had not learned to despise the home where she was so beloved.
"Katy will never come to us again," seemed the prevailing opinion at Silverton, where more than Uncle Ephraim felt a chilling doubt at times as to whether she really wished to come or not. If she did, it seemed easy of accomplishment to those who knew not how perfect and complete were the fetters thrown around her, and how unbending the will which governed hers. Could they have seen the look in Katy's face when she first understood that she was not going to Silverton, their hearts would have bled for the thwarted creature who fled up the stairs to her own room, where Esther found her twenty minutes later, cold and fainting upon the bed, her face as white as ashes, and her hands clinched so tightly that the nails left marks upon the palms.
"It was not strange that the poor child should faint—indeed, it was only natural that nature should give way after so many weeks of gayety, and she very far from being strong," Mrs. Cameron said to Wilford, who was beginning to repent of his decision, and who but for that remark perhaps might have revoked it.
Indeed, he made an attempt to do so when, as consciousness came back, Katy lay so pale and still before him; but Katy did not understand him or guess that he wished her to meet him more than half the way, and so the verdict was unchanged, and in a kind of bewilderment, Katy wrote the hurried letter, feeling less actual pain than did its readers, for the disappointment had stunned her for a time, and all she could remember of the passage home on that same night when Mark Ray sat with Helen in the sitting-room at Silverton, was that there was a fearful storm of rain mingled with lightning flashes and thunder peals, which terrified the other ladies, but brought to her no other sensation save that it would not be so very hard to perish in the dark waters dashing so madly about the vessel's side.
CHAPTER XXI.
A NEW LIFE.
NEW YORK, December 16th.
To Miss HELEN LENNOX, Silverton, Mass.:
Your sister is very ill. Come as soon as possible.
W. CAMERON.
This was the purport of a telegram received at the farmhouse toward the close of a chill December day, and Helen's heart almost stopped its beating as she read it aloud, and then looked in the white, scared faces of those around her. Katy was very ill—dying, perhaps—or Wilford had never telegraphed. What could it be? What was the matter? Had it been somewhat later, they would have known; but now all was conjecture worse than useless, and in a half-distracted state Helen made her hasty preparations for the journey on the morrow, and then sent for Morris, hoping he might offer some advice or suggestion for her to carry to that sickroom in New York.
"Perhaps you will go with me," Helen said. "You know Katy's constitution. You might save her life."