"Why, Tom," Jerrie said, as she read Arthur's reply, "'Pay him then, for I shan't come,' what does he mean? What did you say to him, and whom are you to pay?"
With a half comical smile Tom replied, "I told him the old Nick was to pay, though I am afraid I used a stronger name for his Satanic majesty than that. I guess you'll have to try what you can do."
And so Jerrie's message, "I need you," went across the continent, and brought the ready response, "Coming on the wings of the wind." It was Judge St. Claire who wrote to Harold, for Jerrie, who said: "Tell him everything, and how much I want him here; and tell him, too, of Maude, whose life hangs on a thread. That may bring him sooner."
It was three days before Jerrie was able to go to the Park House, and then Tom came for her, saying Maude was failing very fast. The news which had come upon her so suddenly with regard to Jerrie's birth and the suspicions resting upon Harold shortened the life nearing its close, and the moment Jerrie entered the room she knew the worst, and with a storm of sobs and tears knelt by the sick girl's couch and cried:
"Oh, I can't bear it. I'd give up everything to save you. Oh, Maude, you don't know how much I love you."
Maude was very calm, though her lips quivered a little and the tears filled her eyes as she put her hand in Jerrie's. A great change had come over Maude since the night when she heard Jerrie's story—a change for the better some might have thought, although the physician who attended her gave no hope. She neither coughed nor suffered pain, and could talk all she liked, although often in a whisper, she was so very weak.
"Yes, Jerrie," she said, "I know you love me, and it makes me very glad, and dying seems easier, for I know you will be cared for—Once, when I first thought I must die, I wrote something on paper for father and uncle Arthur to see when I was dead, and it was that they should take you in my place, you and Harold."
Maude's voice shook a little here, but she soon steadied it and went on:
"I wanted them to give you what I thought would be mine had I lived, and what all the time was yours. Oh, Jerrie, how can you help hating me, who have stood so long where you ought to have stood, and enjoyed what you ought to have enjoyed?"
"Maude," Jerrie cried, "don't talk like that; as if I, or any one, could ever have hated you. Why, I worshiped you as some little empress when I used to see you in your bright sashes and yellow kid boots, with the amber beads around your neck; and if the contrast between your finery and my high-necked gingham apron and white sun-bonnet sometimes struck me painfully, I had no wish to take the boots and sashes from you, whom they fitted so admirably; and as we grew older and you did not shrink from or slight Jerrie Crawford, I cannot tell you how great was the love which grew in my heart for you, the dearest girl friend I ever had, and a thousand times dearer now I know you are my cousin."