[CHAPTER XXV.]
When Walter Earle parted from Jaquelina at the lawn gates, he went back to the house with two distinct thoughts in his mind. One was a feeling of indignation and surprise against Ronald Valchester. He was amazed at learning that his friend was an unbeliever in divorces. He firmly resolved to give Ronald a lecture on the subject, when he should be sufficiently recovered to argue the case. His second thought, which he could not help entertaining, was, that since affairs had taken this peculiar turn, there was some hope still for himself.
"After the divorce is granted, I will do my utmost to re-unite them," he said, still loyal to Ronald and Lina in spite of his love for her; "and then if I fail of converting Ronald, I will woo little Lina for myself. Ronald could not accuse me of disloyalty to him in that case."
He could not help feeling that Ronald Valchester's defection must place his own suit in a better light before Jaquelina's eyes. The divorce from the outlaw was only a question of time, Walter thought. They could not fail to grant it. Indeed, it seemed to Walter that it could scarcely be viewed as a marriage at all. Jaquelina once freed from its fetters, she could not help feeling a little indignant at Valchester's view of the case, and, once over the smart of her pain, it seemed to Walter that his own loyal love could not fail to find favor in her eyes.
"And then—who knows?" mused Walter. "Jaquelina once out of his reach, and by his own decision, too, the heart of Valchester may, in time, turn to Violet. Poor little Violet! She has borne her pain bravely, but I am certain that she has not got over it yet."
In spite of his sympathy for the sadly and strangely parted lovers, Walter could not repress a glow of satisfaction at the thought that, after all, his own happiness and that of his sister might be secured by the strange events that had seemed so deplorable at first. Yet he resolved that he would first do all he could to change Valchester's opinion of divorces.
He went back to the sick-room and found his friend very ill and weak. The doctor warned him there must be no talking—his patient could not bear to be excited. He lay back upon the pillow, his handsome face pale as marble, the long, dark lashes lying motionless on his cheek, yet they knew that he was not asleep, only spent and exhausted by the tempest of emotion that had passed over him. His mother sat quietly by the bed-side, looking pale and sad, and heart-broken in the gray morning light. She had telegraphed for General Valchester, and looked anxiously for his arrival at any hour of the day.
As the day wore on, the wound developed a dangerous phase. Fever and delirium set in; Ronald's pale face grew scarlet, his dim eyes bright with fever fires. He tossed restlessly on his pillows, and babbled ceaselessly of his loved Lina, interspersing his flighty murmurs with poetical quotations. "Hiawatha's Wooing" seemed to linger in his mind like a pleasant dream. He would murmur over and over:
"Pleasant was the journey homeward:
All the birds sang loud and sweetly."
And again: