"Oh, my love, if you had given your heart to me instead of her, all this would not have happened. We should have been as happy as the day is long."
A step in the hall startled her, and she sprung up just as the door opened, and her companion, an elderly widow lady, entered the parlor.
"Oh, Mrs. Wellings!" exclaimed Jewel, wildly, and the lady screamed as she saw the apparently dead man on the floor.
As soon as she could speak she began to question Jewel volubly, and the girl explained that he was a friend of hers, and had dropped like that on entering the room.
A physician was hastily summoned, and it was found that Laurie Meredith was not dead. He soon revived, but he had received such a shock that weeks of illness followed, and Jewel declared that he must not be moved from the house.
There was plenty of room. The doctor could send an experienced nurse, she said, and she and Mrs. Wellings would do all they could.
So it followed, that when Laurie Meredith first opened his eyes, after weeks of delirium, with a conscious gaze they fell on Jewel sitting by his bed, looking exquisitely charming in a long white tea-gown with crimson silk facings, and some crimson rosebuds in her braided hair.
He looked at her bewilderedly at first, then a memory of the past began to dawn on him, and he asked her if he had been sick.
"Yes, with brain-fever, for nearly three weeks, but you are better now," Jewel replied, in a sweet, gentle voice that thrilled him in spite of himself, for it sounded something like Flower's as it had whispered to him of her love last summer. He closed his eyes a few moments, and when he opened them again he remembered all.