When the thralldom and the stupor of the fever had partly lifted, and before Stewart came to himself, Trevelyan left and went back to Scotland and to old Mactier, nor could anyone persuade him to remain.
Days later, when Stewart was sitting up, he saw Cary for the first time.
"There is some one waiting outside whom you will be glad to see," his mother had said.
"It is Cary? You are going to let me see Cary?" he cried.
"If you will be good and not talk," she answered, leaving the door ajar.
Stewart turned his face to the door, pressing his long, thin fingers resting on his knee, close together.
She came in carrying a bunch of violets, and stood by his chair, looking down at him. He looked up at her, and it seemed to him that she was beautiful, and her voice the sweetest he had ever heard.
"I have waited and wanted so to give you these myself," she said, "and you have frightened us all so."
She spoke with the simplicity of a little girl, but there was a quality in her voice that Stewart had not heard before, and he knew that Cary had become a woman.
He clung to her hand in parting with that pathetic bodily weakness that makes a man, in illness, like a child.