CHAPTER XII.
The next day Jacqueline was better, and about noon General and Mrs. Temple arrived. Mrs. Temple showed no surprise when she heard that Jacqueline had come the day before; and when Judith said, falteringly, that Jacqueline had probably misunderstood their plans, Mrs. Temple accepted it quite naturally. About the same time Dr. Wortley, who had been sent for, came, and pronounced Jacqueline’s attack to be nothing but cold and fever, and raised the prohibition against her talking. The first time Mrs. Temple was out of the room, Jacqueline called Judith to her.
“Judith, I have been thinking about this, and I have made up my mind.”
This was so unlike Jacqueline that Judith stared.
“If I thought Freke was really a single man, I would give up everybody—even you—for him. But nobody on earth knows what I suffered from my conscience while I was with him! And I believe Freke told the truth when he said we weren’t married, after all, in spite of that minister and the fifty dollars. And now, dear Judith, it seems so easy to keep papa and mamma from knowing it.”
“Easy, Jacqueline?—”
“Yes, easy, if you will only write to Aunt Steptoe; and it would kill me to have to face them!”
“But, Jacqueline, suppose—suppose Freke should claim you, or you might, in years to come, want to marry some one else?”
“I will promise you I will not—I will swear it—if I can’t marry Freke, you may depend upon it I sha’n’t marry anybody else! But, Judith, will you promise me to say nothing to papa and mamma until you have seen Freke, for he knows what ought to be done? I know—and I am sure—he will come back in a day or two. He knows well enough where I have run away to.”
Judith was loath to making any promise at all, but Jacqueline became so violently agitated and distressed that at last, almost beside herself, Judith promised that for a few days, at least, she would say nothing about it.