"It is Miss Verne, ma'am; but she is some better now. Oh! I thought, ma'am, that you would never come—and she was asking for you."
The poor girl was deeply attached to her young mistress and was nearly bereft of her senses when she found the latter lying upon the sofa in an apparently lifeless condition.
A physician had been summoned, who pronounced the girl in no imminent danger, but said that there was some anxiety to be feared as regards nervous prostration.
Marguerite had been quickly restored to consciousness, but she was white as the coverlid that overspread the luxurious bed upon which she lay so calm and still.
"My child, what has done this," exclaimed Mrs. Verne looking wildly around her as if for answer from some other than those that stood about.
"Don't be alarmed, mamma, I am better," said the girl, attempting to raise herself upon the pillow, but she fell back exhausted, and closed her eyelids, looking sad and wretched.
Mrs. Verne was ill at ease as she watched at Marguerite's bedside. Remorse for once seized upon her as she pictured herself moving about the gay throng, and her child, perhaps, on the verge of death.
"I might have known that she did not look herself, for those great circles around her mouth and eyes ought to have told me of her illness; but I trust she will soon be all right."
Mrs. Verne took a second glance at the pale face to gain more assurance and hope, and as she stood there tried hard to impute her daughter's present indisposition to every source, but the real one.
"The poor girl is fretting herself to death over her father's failure, for she knows that it will affect his reputation in society. She will not acknowledge it, but I am certain that she would feel the snubs of our most intimate friends more titan I would. Indeed, they would kill the poor sensitive Madge; and to think that Stephen Verne brought all this upon his family by his own slackness. Talk about honesty! It makes fools of people. A man who is so honest that he must trust every other man he meets is a fool, and worse than a fool, he's not only a fool towards himself, but a fool towards his family."