She fell back among her pillows, shut her eyes, and seemed to sleep; then, before the doctor came, she had lapsed into delirious babblings. While he sat by the bed, watching her with the greatest uneasiness, she had a lucid interval, in which she begged him not to let Royall know of her illness.
“He is not strong, and the shock might kill him. You can take care of me,” she said pleadingly.
But when she was quiet again, he whispered to her aunt and Annette:
“But, good heavens, this is brain fever! I fear that she will die!”
CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE STRENGTH OF LOVE.
The anxious days came and went until Daisie had been ill almost two weeks, with scarcely a conscious moment; but still no word went to Royall Sherwood of her illness, because of the promise she had extracted not to let him know unless she was actually dying.
And, though the fever rose to its greatest height, and her delirious ravings made their hearts ache with the fear that she could not live, still the crisis had not come yet, and the letter was not sent.
There was no lack of skillful nursing, no lack of medical care, no lack of love, for Aunt Alice and Annette gave her all their time; but it almost seemed as if nothing could hold Daisie back from the land of shadows to which she was hastening. She had no hold on life, because she was weary of it.
On that beautiful day when the sun came out so brightly, and the blue waves lapped the golden shore at Gull Beach, Doctor Burns thought he saw a subtle change in his patient, whether for better or worse he could not yet say, but he told them that the crisis would come that night.
“Had we not better telegraph Mr. Sherwood now?” he asked anxiously.