Giving the letter to Jack with directions to put it in the post-office without delay, I hurried to Virginia with the joyful tidings. I expected a burst of tears and an infinitude of thanks. Instead of either, when I had finished my story, she said, in a slightly aggrieved tone—
"I am sorry, Pauline, you told father I should certainly die unless he sent for Philip. It will make him think me so weak."
"Why, Virginia," I exclaimed, taken quite by surprise, "what should I have said?"
"You might have said that I was not very well, or something of that kind."
"And then he would have sent for Dr. Parkinson, and the only result would have been a few doses of calomel or quinine. No, dear, I never once thought of your not being well. I felt sure you would die, and I said so. I am sorry it troubles you, but I think it was the best thing I could do."
Virginia blushed the next time she saw her father, as if he had been her lover instead; but, as he said nothing to her on the subject, she gradually recovered from her embarrassment, and by the time Mr. Marshall joined her she had so far recovered her health as to be able to enjoy without a drawback what some people consider the happiest part of one's life.
Mr. Percy did not relinquish his desire to have his daughter settled near him, and one or two successful years enabled him to effect his wishes. Lieutenant Marshall was induced to resign from the army, and with his wife and six children he is now living and prospering on a plantation; and in the substantial person of Mrs. Marshall, anxious and troubled about many things in her household and maternal concerns, I find it hard to discover the least trace of the shadowy and ethereal girl who had seemed to me at one time much more a part of the spirit world than of this material sphere.