Jaquelina rose from her crouching attitude in which she had remained cramped on the hearth-rug all night, shivering and wretched.
"You must go to him alone," said the kindly physician. "He wishes it so earnestly. Try to be very calm, my child. Agree to everything he says. If he becomes excited, call me into the room."
Jaquelina went very quietly, though her dark eyes shone like stars. She did not know with what a baleful gaze Violet watched her as she went into that room where the idol of both their hearts waited for her coming.
They listened, fearful of some excited cry, but no sound came from the next room save a murmur of low, hushed voices. In a very little while—ten or fifteen minutes at the most—the door opened and Jaquelina came out again.
"My dear," the old physician cried out in alarm, and he went up to her involuntarily. The strange pallor on her beautiful young face frightened him.
She lifted her heavy, dark eyes that seemed to have no light or beauty left in them any more, and looked up at him.
"Doctor Leslie," she said, "will you let his mother go to him now? He is not excited. I think he is quite calm, but perhaps his mother may comfort him."
She went out into the hall the next moment. No one thought of stopping her. Her strange appearance had almost frightened them. Doctor Leslie led Mrs. Valchester quietly into her son's room. Jaquelina went softly down-stairs and took her shawl and hat from the rack in the hall. She put them on mechanically and stole quietly out of the house into the chilly, rainy world that lay outside.
She walked quietly along the wet and sodden path across the lawn, little dreaming that Walter Earle had observed her from an upper window and was hastening after her. She turned with a start at his light touch upon her arm.
"Lina, what does this mean?" he cried.