'I hope you will leave a few flowers for Maude. You know she likes them so much.'
Jerrie made no reply, but by the pang of resentment which shot through her heart at the smallness of the woman, she knew she was not past all feeling, and that there was still something human in the stone, as she had styled herself.
Slowly the day wore on, every minute seeming an hour, and every hour a day, until at last Jerrie heard the carriage driving down the avenue, and not long after the whistle of the engine in the distance. Then, bending over Maude and kissing her fondly, she said:
'Pray for me, darling, I am going to meet my father.'
Arthur had been very quiet during the first part of the journey from San Francisco, and it was with difficulty that Charles could get a word from him.
'Let me alone,' he said once, when spoken to. 'I am with Gretchen. She is on the train with me, and I'm trying to make out what it is she is telling me.'
But after Chicago was left behind his mood changed, and he became as wild and excitable as he had before been abstracted and silent. Sometimes he was on the top of old Capitan, looking down into the valley below, and singing 'glory, hallelujah,' at the top of his voice, while the startled passengers kept aloof from him as from a lunatic. Again he was out upon the platform urging the conductor to greater speed; and when at last Shannondale was reached, he bounded from the car upon the platform before the train stopped, and was collaring Rob, the coachman, and demanding of him to know what was the matter with Jerrie, and why he had been sent for. Rob, who had received his instructions to be wholly non-committal answered stolidly that nothing was the matter with Jerrie, but that Miss Maude was very sick and probably would not live many days.
'Is that all?' Arthur said, gloomily, as he entered the carriage. 'I do not see what the old Harry has to do with Maude's dying, and certainly Tom's telegram said something about that chap. I have it in my pocket. Yes, here it is. "Come immediately. The devil is to pay." That doesn't mean Maude. There is something else Rob has not told me. 'Here, you rascal, you are keeping something from me! What is it? Out with it!' he shouted to the driver, as he thrust his head from the carriage window, where he kept it, and in this way was driven to the door of the Park House, where Frank was waiting for him outside, and where, inside, Jerrie stood, holding fast to the banisters of the stairs, her heart throbbing wildly one moment, and the next seeming to lie pulseless as a piece of lead.
She heard Arthur's voice as he came up the steps, speaking to Frank, and asking why he had been sent for; and the next moment she saw him entering the hall, tall and erect, but with the wild look in his eyes which she knew so well, but which changed at once to a softer expression as they fell upon her.
'Cherry, you here!' he cried, with a joyful ring in his voice as he sprang to her side and kissed her forehead and lips.