“Why are you unhappy? Has anything happened?” Mrs. Stannard asked, smoothing the soft golden hair on the small head, which was lying back against the cushions of a chair.
Connie looked at her a moment, and then told very briefly of Count Costello’s offer to herself, of her refusal, of his marriage with her aunt, to whom she said he was kind; of the dreary house he called a palace, and of his saying to her: “Your young face is daily a painful contrast to that of the countess, handsome as she is.”
“After that I could not stay, a foil to my aunt, who cares for him, while I hate him,” she said, “and so I came here. Are you glad?”
She had asked the same question of Kenneth, who had answered by drawing her close to him, while his mother stooped and kissed her, as she replied: “Very glad; and now go to bed. You will be better to-morrow.”
Connie had said nothing of the real pain eating into her heart, and Mrs. Stannard, while indignant at Count Costello, wondered why he should have had the power to change this once bright, rosy girl into the wan, pale woman who had scarcely strength to get into bed, and who, when there, looked almost as white as the pillow on which she was resting.
CHAPTER XII
CONNIE’S ILLNESS
It was a heavy, dreamless sleep which came to Connie that night, and when she woke at a late hour the next morning the storm was over, the sun was shining into the room, while Kenneth stood by her, counting her pulse. She tried to lift her head, but it fell back upon the pillow, as, with an effort to smile, she asked, “Am I going to be ill?”
“Not going to be. You are; but we will soon have you well,” Kenneth replied, holding her hot hand a moment.
“Well, I’m glad I’m here. So glad!” Connie said, closing her eyes and falling asleep again, while Kenneth watched her anxiously.
It was past the middle of March when Connie came in the storm, and the early daffodils and crocuses were in bloom when she at last sat up and looked around her at a world which seemed so new. For weeks she had lain between life and death, stricken with fever which scorched her blood and stained her face a purple tint, so high it ran at times. From Rocky Point, Dr. Catherin came in consultation, and a specialist from Albany, while Kenneth kept his tireless watch at her side. At first she talked constantly,—sometimes of Count Costello and the dreary house in Genoa, and again of something Kenneth could not understand, except that there was a he who must at some time have been closely mixed up in Connie’s life. She never spoke his name, and Kenneth would not ask it, or question her, as she babbled on of the Jungfrau and the mountains and the bowlder by the brook and the moonlight nights among the Alps, in all of which he played a prominent part. Once he did say to her, “Where is he now?” and she answered, “Gone, gone.”