But if Alva were uneasy over her sick brother, she concealed it cleverly, or did not think that her pretty model had any interest in the subject, for she never mentioned it again until more than a week had passed away.
Then Floy, tortured by a secret unrest, cried out one day:
“Have you never heard from your parents yet?”
Alva was so busy she did not look around from her picture, and only answered:
“No. It is only a week since they went, you see, and they would not send a cablegram unless St. George was very ill. I dare say it was all a false alarm.”
Floy feared it was not, for although she had written secretly to the postmaster at Mount Vernon to forward her letters, none had been received, and she knew there must be some reason for his ceasing to write.
At last she ventured on a little loving letter to him, but by freak of fate it went astray, and the lover’s heart lost the joy it would have brought.
At length there came letters for Alva from abroad, and then she said to Floy:
“It was all true about my brother, mamma says. He has been very, very ill with brain fever, and came near to death.”
They were sitting alone in the twilight, so Alva did not see the corpse-like pallor of the listener’s face as Floy clinched her dimpled hands together in her lap, silently praying Heaven not to let her cry out in her anguish and betray her loving secret.