“He is doing well,” said Mrs. Burt, “and as you need me more than he does now, I shall come home and let that Isabel take care of him. It won’t hurt her any, the jade. She can telegraph for her mother if she chooses.”
Accordingly, she returned to the sick room, where she found Frederic asleep and Isabel reading a novel.
To her announcement of leaving, the latter made no objection. She was rather pleased than otherwise, for, as Frederic grew stronger, the presence of a third person, and a stranger, too, might be disagreeable. She would telegraph for her mother, of course, as she did not think it quite proper to stay there alone. But her mother was under her control; she could dispose of her at any time, so she merely stopped her reading long enough to say, “Very well, you can go if you like. How much is your charge?”
Mrs. Burt did not hesitate to tell her; and Isabel, who had taken care of Frederic’s purse, paid her, and then resumed her book, while Mrs. Burt, with a farewell glance at her patient, went from the room, without a word of explanation as to where she could be found in case they wished to find her.
It was dark when Frederic awoke, and it was so still around him that he believed himself alone.
“They have all left me,” he said; “Mrs. Merton, Isabel, and that other one, that being of mystery—who was she—who could she have been?” and shutting his eyes, he tried to bring her before him just as he had often seen her bending o’er his pillow.
He knew now that it was not a phantom of his brain, but a reality. There had been a young girl there, and when the world without was darkest, and he was drifting far down the river of death, her voice had called him back, and her hands had held him up so that he did not sink in the deep, angry waters. There were tears many times upon her face, he remembered, and once he had wiped them away, asking why she cried. It was a pretty face, he said, a very pretty face, and the sunny eyes of blue seemed shining on him even now, while the memory of her gentle acts was very, very sweet, thrilling him with an undefined emotion, and awakening within his bosom a germ of the undying love he was yet to feel for the mysterious stranger. She had called him Frederic, too, while he had called her Marian. She had answered to that name, she asked him of Isabel, and—“oh, Heaven!” he cried, starting quickly and clasping both hands upon his head. Like a thunderbolt it burst upon him, and for an instant his brain seemed all on fire. “It was Marian!—it was Marian!” he essayed to say, but his lips refused to move, and when Isabel, startled by his sudden movement, struck a light and came to his bedside, she saw that he had fainted!
In great alarm she summoned help, begging of those who came to go at once for Mrs. Merton. But no one knew of the woman’s place of residence, and as she had failed to inquire, it was a hopeless matter. Slowly Frederic came back to consciousness, and when he was again alone with Isabel he said to her, “Where is that woman who took care of me?”
“She is gone,” said Isabel. “Gone to her home.”
“Gone,” he repeated. “When did she go, and why?”