To this kindly soul he went in his trouble, and was received with motherly cordiality.
Preferring not to tell her the actual truth, he satisfied her curiosity with a plausible story, and soon had Jessie disrobed and placed in a warm, comfortable bed.
But though the woman who had dearly loved Jessie always called her by every fond, endearing name, no light of recognition shone in the dazed, dark eyes. By morning they found that she was really ill, and needed a physician.
“She has had a fall and perhaps injured her brain—however, I can tell better by to-morrow,” said the man of healing.
Acting on this clever diagnosis, his treatment of the case was so correct that within three days the light of reason returned to Jessie’s eyes.
It was a fact that the fall on the pavement and striking her head had more seriously injured Jessie than the drug she had taken, the latter having only induced a long, deep sleep, very like its “twin brother death.”
Leon Dalrymple watched by her bedside with passionate devotion, feeling that he had at last something to live for in this beautiful daughter restored to him as from the dead.
While she still lay ill without having recognized any one around her, he provided the Widow Doyle with a full purse and sent her out to buy a fine outfit.
“We are going away on a journey, my daughter and I,” he said. “She must have a large trunkful of good clothing suitable to a young lady of moderate fortune—nothing gaudy or cheap, but of fine material, and of the best make.”
Mrs. Doyle was a woman of excellent taste, and she fitted Jessie out well with clothing of the best style, so that when she was well enough to sit up she could while away the hours of convalescence by admiring her pretty, new things.