Star passed her hand across her forehead and sighed heavily, as she began slowly to gather up the broken threads of memory again.
“What was it, Starling?” Mr. Rosevelt questioned, with a troubled look at her white face; “did you have bad news in your letters?”
“No, there were no ill-tidings in my letters,” she answered, avoiding his eye, and wishing to conceal, if possible, the cause of her swoon from him. “I read them through,” she added, “and was opening my papers, when I began to feel queerly. I believe I never fainted but once before in my life.”
But she shuddered as she remembered how Josephine Richards had been the cause of that ill-turn also.
She sat up and tried to collect herself.
She still felt as if those icy bands were encircling her heart, and as if her brain was on fire; but she was anxious to get hold of that paper once more, and go away by herself.
She did not mean that Jacob Rosevelt should ever know that she had seen the notice of her lover’s marriage; she meant to keep her secret locked close within her own breast, and not even let him suspect that she was still grieving for the man whose name had not been mentioned between them for over a year.
“I am afraid you are going to be ill,” he said, noticing the great blue circles under her eyes with alarm.
“No; do not be anxious about me, Uncle Jacob,” she returned, trying to smile. “I shall be all right again in a few minutes.”
And she was, apparently.