"So young and beautiful; and she can not be a poor girl, for her clothing is of the finest quality," Mrs. Franklyn said to her grandson. "Perhaps there are people who are anxious over her fate. Do you think we ought to let it be known through the papers?" she added.
"No, not yet. Let us wait till she gets well and tells us what to do," he replied.
Chester Franklyn had fallen in love at first sight with the beautiful creature whose life he had saved. He was afraid that some one would take her away from him if he let her presence be known.
"Let me have my chance first," he said to himself, with all the selfish ardor of a young lover.
It seemed strange that Kathleen lay passive so long after the fever left her, without seeming to take any interest in anything. They asked her her name; they asked her where her home was, and how she came to be in the river. To everything she answered dreamily:
"I do not know."
They did not know that before Kathleen had been thrown into the river she had swallowed with her food a potent drug intended to produce death. It was entirely owing to the small quantity of food she had taken that she survived at all, but the strange drug had partially paralyzed her faculties. Memory was dormant, or returned in such faint gleams that it threw no light on her present state.
She knew that two beautiful, kindly faces—a woman's old but strangely lovely, and a young man's with deep blue eyes and curls of gold—bent daily over her pillow. She watched them eagerly, she smiled at them faintly and sweetly, but so numb were her reasoning faculties that she did not wonder at their presence there. She was utterly quiescent.
Mrs. Franklyn became alarmed, fearing the girl was an idiot, but Chester was indignant at the very idea.