CHAPTER V. A STRANGE BOOK.
That evening, when John returned from the forest, he found his little daughter flushed and excited, with her eyes shining purple in the twilight and a strange earnestness in her manner, which, he feared, spoke of a sudden uprising of fever,—that fever which was so slowly but surely wasting away her little life.
"Thou hast not been very long by thyself, hast thou, my sweet one?" he said anxiously, as he looked at the eyes raised up so lovingly to his, but still full of some strange and hidden tremor.
"Oh no, Fritz has been here; and, besides, I have been reading." She glanced with almost the nervousness of guilt at the little table beside her, and moved herself restlessly on her chair.
"My darling has been tiring herself, I fear," said John, sitting down on the window-sill beside her, and putting his great arm round her lovingly. "Well, now that father is returned, dost thou know—canst thou guess what he has been about all the afternoon?"
"No, father," she said softly, laying her head down on his shoulder with a long, weary breath. Her thoughts were evidently engrossed by some subject of which he knew nothing.
"Ah, my sweet one must not sigh like that," he said, drawing her tenderly towards him; "it makes father's heart ache; and, besides, when Violet hears father's news, instead of crying, she will almost fly out of her chair with joy."
"What!" she cried, sitting so suddenly up that John was almost terrified, and had to loose his close grasp of his little girl; "tell me, father, quickly, quickly, tell Violet thy news."
John gazed at her in silent wonder. He did not understand this mood—the brightly-glittering eyes, the deepening flush, the expression of a burning but unspoken anxiety, and the constant restless motion of the little hand which lay hot and dry in his palm.
"What hast thou been reading?" he asked curiously, stretching out his arm towards the little table beside her, on which now for the first time he had noticed a book—a strange book with a yellow-spotted paper cover and red edges. It was open, but was turned down upon the Bible which always rested on the table beside her chair—her mother's Bible, the most precious thing she had in all the world.