And he laughed in delirious glee.
“Heaven keep me, too, from going mad?” cried Marian. “Oh! why did I come here?”
“I told you not to all the time,” was Mrs. Burt’s consolatory remark; which, however was lost on Marian, who, seizing her bonnet and shawl, rushed from the room, unmindful of the outstretched arms which seemed imploring her to stay.
The fresh morning air revived her fainting strength, but did not cool the feverish agony at her heart, and she sped onward, until she reached her home, where she surprised Ben at his solitary breakfast, which he had prepared himself.
“Oh! Ben, Ben!” she cried, coming so suddenly upon him that he upset the coffee-pot into which he was pouring some hot water. “Would it be wicked for you to kill me dead, or for me to kill myself?”
“What’s to pay now?” asked Ben, using the skirt of his coat for a holder in picking up the steaming coffee-pot.
Very hastily Marian related her adventures in the sick room, telling how Frederic had talked of marrying Isabel before her very face.
“Crazy as a loon,” returned Ben. “I shouldn’t think nothin’ of that. You say he talked as though he thought you was dead, and of course he don’t know what he’s sayin’. Have they writ to his folks?”
“Yes,” returned Marian, who had made a similar inquiry of Mrs. Burt. “They directed a letter to ‘Frederic Raymond’s friends, Franklin County, Kentucky,’ but that may not reach them in a long time.”
“Wouldn’t it be a Christian act,” returned Ben “for us, who know jest who he is, to telegraph to that critter, and have her come? By all accounts he wants to see her, and it may do him good.”